


Sunset

by wordsphoenix



Series: Rhode Island seems like the safest option [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: James POV, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, also there will be some dark Thomas backstory so sorry in advance for that, anything on the show may or may not make it in here, it pisses me off there's no James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton relationship tag like WHAT THE FUCK, lots of hurt/comfort because James needs to work through his shit, picks up immediately after finale scene, the summaries will warn you in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-11-14 06:32:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18047360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsphoenix/pseuds/wordsphoenix
Summary: Georgia isn't even a colony, which makes escape that much more feasible. James gets the rest he needs and then sets off with Thomas to- well, they don't have a plan beyond peace and survival, but you and I both know that isn't enough to satisfy them.Also "the sun never sets on the British Empire my ass" is going to be a James quote now so that's why that's the title.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> History-wise I am researching things before I write them. If we can guesstimate this takes place in 1720, there is no Georgia. It's just land at this point. So. I think they can make it if they get to, you know, not the middle of nowhere. Also, for future reference, I have tried to read about all the things I'm discussing, but if there's a colonial history buff out there, feel free to call me the heck out. Correct me, my ability to read library books and class project websites does not make me a pre-Revolutionary Americas scholar.

            If he didn’t trust his sanity after all the past month had wrought, James would’ve thought he’d gone mad. Or died, maybe. If killers went to heaven.

            This person who he’d loved and missed and mourned, standing in front of him, alive. Joy and hope and fear all fighting each other to come second to the one thing that truly mattered: love, his love was alive.

            Thomas saw it all in him and held tighter.

            When James could speak, say more than his name without running out of breath, “We should have been together, all this time. The three of us.”

            “I know.” He had to have seen it. Written all over James’s face. How could James have approached otherwise? He was here. Only him. They held each other, again. Thomas’s tears wet on his shoulder.

            As if their collective grief was not enough already. And all James could do was hold him through it.

            Once his breath had evened, Thomas pulled back, stared in earnest. “I’m sorry.”

            “Sorry?” James reached up, took his face in his hands. “What on earth do you have to be sorry for? I’m the one who’s sorry. For not looking for you. For giving up. For not saving you when I had the chance.”

            Thomas shrugged his hands away, gripped James’s shoulders with a fierceness he’d ached for in the long nights. “No. You had a responsibility to Miranda.”

            How that must have cost him, to say her name so soon after losing her- and honest, he believed it, believed it so deeply no argument could have countered it- wrong, he was wrong, they should have tried- “We had a responsibility to you, and I’m a fool for not having seen it.”

            Thomas offered a faint smile. “It makes no difference now. Since I doubt you’ll find consolation in my certainty, little though it was, that the two of you were together. I took some comfort knowing you were safe.”

            A hundred fights flashed through his head, and then the most important, the one that wasn’t really a fight at all. Bullet ripped the only piece of him left away, the only part he recognized gone before he could exhale. “We were never safe again.” James was crying.

            Thomas brushed a tear away, smiling stronger, like he was trying to give that strength to James. “Because you were too stubborn to give up our dream?” James had almost forgotten that a person could be so strong.

            “Because we wouldn’t let you die for nothing.” All of it, for nothing, and now here they are, again, Miranda a gaping hole that he knows can never be filled. No miracle can pull her from the ground. Make them whole again. Even this is a miracle; a gift greater than any he could have imagined, a sinking relief that after all this time and all this fighting they were finally here. Against all odds, the two of them, alive.

            Vital and passionate as James had ever seen him. “It wouldn’t have been for nothing. As long as you could leave, as long as you could remain free- I’d bear that burden a hundred times over so you didn’t have to.” Sincerity pouring from his mouth.

            “Stop,” James pulled him in again, couldn’t hear any more. Just needed to be.

            Some time went by, quiet.

            Thomas eventually spoke. “You’re here.” The joy in his voice was everything. It was James’s whole world now. He had nothing else.

            Maybe that was alright. “ _You’re_ here.” James pulled back to look at him. “I never have to lose you again.”

            “Is that a promise?”

            James managed a laugh. “Yes. You’ll be lucky if I let you out of my sight.”

            “I don’t mind. You kept me alive, you know. Would have wasted away. Then I remembered the two of you would kill me for it, and I tried… I tried. I stayed sane. I knew as long as you lived you’d stay together.”

            She would have, Miranda. She would have fought Thomas tooth and nail over it. If she wasn’t giving up neither was he.

            She never had. They had come so close. James had been so close. “I wouldn’t have a purpose without you. Without you, Miranda, everything we were trying to build… I don’t know what I would have become.” So close. So fucking close to madness and somehow enough Thomas and Miranda left in him to keep going, to hold onto that purpose.

            And now his world had been reduced to this point, this moment. Everything he had replaced by the one thing he never thought he’d have again.

Thomas. Thomas was alive. “You’re here, now, James McGraw.”

            He was. Not Flint, never. Though he’d need to be, a little, to see them through this. “We’re going to need new names.” When Thomas only stared, “To escape.”

            Thomas stroked his back. The way he did when James felt like he was about to shatter, to rip apart from the inside. You’ll never have to feel that way again. Thomas is here now. Teasing you, “And here I thought you’d give me a few days to recover from the shock.”

            “I will. As much time as you need. But I don’t intend to spend a minute longer here than we have to.”

            Thomas read the truth there, nodded. Looks like you’re the one who needs time, his expression said.

            “Shut up,” James said.

            “I didn’t say anything.”

            “You were thinking it.”

            “It’s true. You’ve been through hell, haven’t you?”

            James buried his face in Thomas’s shoulder so Thomas couldn’t see his face. “A thousand times over. As, I’m sure, have you.”  
            “I’m on the other side. It’s not so bad.”

            James pulled himself back together and moved back to stare.

            Thomas smiled again. “What? I mean it. If I’d found a way to get past the gates and survive afterwards, I’d’ve done it already.”

            “Is it that bad?”

            “I’m outnumbered, and I can’t climb. Bad knee.”

            Before James could get an answer for that, someone behind him cleared their throat. “Later,” James said, and turned them to see who was there.

            The master of the house. Whatever his name was. Some disgraced politician paid to keep the secrets there. “We have some things to discuss, Captain Flint.”

            “McGraw. Though I’ll happily answer to Flint if it reminds you who I am.” He half-held onto Thomas still.

            The man grimaced. James guessed it wasn’t the embrace that did it, owing to the fact the man spared it the briefest of glances before his eyes settled on James’s face. “I was not apprised of your wit, sir. Please, come inside. We can discuss this-”

            “He comes with.” James didn’t move his arm.

            Mild distaste. “I don’t think that would be appr-”

            “Seems a bit early for me to remind you my understanding of appropriateness is very different from yours.”

            Man sighed. “You were a Royal Navy Officer once. Surely you can remember-”

            “He comes with.” Threatening look. James could barely stand, and he didn’t want to reintroduce himself to Thomas with the violence that would have met anyone who tried to separate them. The housemaster would have to compromise.

            He grit his teeth. “Fine. But be aware that were this not a very special circumstance-”

            James walked past him towards the house, Thomas at his side.

 

            Barely a chance to catch his breath before he’d been dragged into that, politics again, be careful with your words and for the love of god don’t slip. Still wouldn’t for a second let go of Thomas. “Did he seem afraid of me?”

            Thomas laughed. James felt it in his chest. “He gave you a guest room. Surely if he weren’t afraid you and I would be down in the barracks by now.”

            James wanted to make a joke about pirate gold being worth more than the honest English kind, but he’d just lain the groundwork for their escape going unreported and the amount of thinking that task required had sapped his remaining mental fortitude. He hummed and shut his eyes.

            “I felt that, you know?”

            Opened his eyes for Thomas. “What?”

            “That noise you just made. I felt it in my chest.”

            James hummed, smiled, closed his eyes again. They were collapsed on the dusty bed, pressed together. Half of him wanted to pass out on the spot and the other half was terrified of what would happen if they got separated somehow in sleep. “My mind’s a wreck.”  
            “So’s mine. You did talk him into letting us off tomorrow, though, so-”

            “Sleep?”

            “Sleep.”

            James would like to stay like this. Never move again. This was much better than watching the ship burn. Much better than facing down Silver and his pistol. Much, much better than a Spanish canon, or starving, or someone else’s broken bones under his hands…

            He awoke with a start to find Thomas watching him sleep.

            “Sorry.”

            A wave of relief followed the waking jolt. Still here. He’s still here. “What time is it?” Light was streaming through the moth-eaten curtains.

            Thomas made a noncommittal sound. “Seven, eight? Don’t know. I’ve been up for a while.”

            “We both should have slept more.” James forced himself to sit up. His whole body ached.

            “I’m on a farm schedule. _You_ should have slept more.”

            “I’m fine.” James looked down to find himself fully dressed, still covered in filth from the journey. Though Thomas had taken off his shoes for him. “When did you take off my shoes?”

            “Doesn’t matter. You’ll need some clothes. Clean ones, same as mine, so they know why you’re here. Clean sheets, too, since we didn’t bother undressing. And a bath. You could use one of those.”

            “I’m not the one who spent yesterday in the field.”

            “You’ll be out there tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and-”

            James’s expression cut him off. “You think it’ll take us that long to orchestrate an escape?”

            Thomas set his mouth. “We’re not leaving until you’ve had three real nights of sleep.”

            James wanted to argue. Knew better. Knew Thomas was probably right, anyway. “We’ll have to talk.” Thomas put a hand over his when James said it. Like he could tell just by the look of him how sick it made James feel, how afraid, even though the thought of fear after this was ridiculous, because- “We don’t have to talk about everything. But there are things I want you to know.”

            Thomas nodded. “Get you some food first.”

            “As long as it’s better than yesterday’s poor excuse of a tea service.”

            They were allowed to scrounge for leftovers from the kitchen, as they had missed the morning meal. They were being excused from the schedule that day on account of James’s ‘volatile’ condition and the pretense of Thomas accustoming him to the place. It’d been one of the things Thomas had proposed, the night before, and James trusted his judgment enough to accept the slight to his image. If being talked out of a murderous rage could be considered a slight.

            God only knew what the men thought of him. Very little, if Thomas was right. “The men keep away from the house, so it’s not likely they’ll have heard much about you. And a man’s entitled to tell his own story here. Most of us were victims of slander, after all. We weren’t raised for anything close to forced labor. Some people need a month before they can do all that’s required of us.”

            “Somehow I don’t think I’ll be allowed that excuse.”

            Thomas set some food down in front of them, leftover breakfast which James gratefully pulled closer. “No. But a day or two, surely.”

            “Won’t you be missed?”

            Thomas spun from retrieving glasses of water and raised his eyebrows. “I believe they’ll manage without me.”

            James doubted the housemaster was that lenient. “Did I do that good a job negotiating my position here?”

            “I’m sure the money helped. Bigger the secret the bigger the cost, so I expect it was quite a hefty sum if it got Randall to admit you.”

            “Randall’s the one who’s really in charge, then?” James had made it through half a loaf of bread and moved onto cold bacon.

            Thomas had started on an apple. “He isn’t anyone you saw yesterday, but yes. He’s the second-in-command here, the one who sees to all the tasks a minor peer far from home is too delicate to handle. Away on business now, of course. Undoubtedly something unpleasant.”

            “Lord Hereford can’t handle the particulars?” James had finally learned the man’s name as they discussed his position over tea in the parlor the night before. He was unpleasant, but certainly not a threat. Evidently Randall was a different sort.

            “Lord Hereford wouldn’t dare imagine the things Randall’s seen. He’s one of us, after all, only without nearly so much disgrace. Had to be something small- compared to me, at least- for Hereford to end up with an experimental plot of land too far south for comfort and a commune filled with outcast lesser lordlings to tend to.”

            James frowned. “You aren’t a lesser lordling.”

            Thomas shrugged. “As far as England’s concerned I don’t exist. Better than the madhouse, though.”

            A chill ran down James’s spine. “I suppose your father wasn’t merciful.”

            Thomas continued the discussion like it was of no consequence. “No. I think he paid for anonymity most of all. Years ago, a man long dead, who can say? I suspect sending me here was the only kind thing he did in his last decade of life.”

            James leaned forward, shoved the food away, no longer hungry. “Sending you here wasn’t kind.”

            “No. Kinder than an asylum, though, so my lot’s not so bad after all.” James held his eyes, steady. Thomas had accepted it. Made peace with it. Learned to live with whatever demons he’d known before being sent to this place.

            James understood. Thought he did, at least. Had to be worse than his own demons. Even so, learning how to live with the things they’d seen was no easy feat. “An English madhouse is hardly a suitable minimum standard of living.”

            “And I, a lord with a wife. These men, too. How many others are there?” Thomas meant less important in the eyes of society. Less deserving of mercy.

            James felt like he was going to be sick. “Too many.” Disgust. Anger, yes, always, but also towards Silver- “In Nassau we could have been free. We were so close, Thomas. I let trust blind me. I thought- I thought I could see him through it. I thought he trusted me enough for that.”

            Thomas didn’t ask who, trusted James would tell him in time. God, James had missed him. “You made it to the colonies.”

            James looked up. “If Nassau could be called a colony.”

            Thomas shook his head. “You got us so much closer. The three of us never made it out of London, but you- you and Miranda, you-”

            Saying it before he could stop- “It was Ashe. He killed her. He was the easiest path to negotiation and he- one of his men came in and shot her. She was upset, screaming at him- he could have done so much more, you- you know, you were there- and I didn’t even-”

            “That wasn’t your fault.” Thomas gripped his shoulder, shook a little. “James. That wasn’t your fault.”

            Voice breaking on the words, looking up at Thomas feeling the guilt again already but desperate to be thrown a line, “Wasn’t it?”

            Thomas leaned to press his forehead to James’s. “She’d be furious at you for even suggesting it.”

            “Miranda was her own person,” James said. Right, of course Thomas was right. Would have chastised him thoroughly for hanging onto guilt, the way she had when Thomas was first taken from them. “She did things, acted without telling me plenty of times, but this- we should never have gone into his house, we should have-” James cut off, remembering. He’d have to tell him. The whole story. The extent of Ashe’s betrayal, if he didn’t already know somehow.

            “We don’t have to do this now.”

            James looked around the empty kitchen, out the window towards the rows of crops and the men tending them. “If not now, when?”

            “We have time, James. As much of it as we like.”

            “Would that be while we’re serving our indentures in the field or sitting in barracks with twenty other men to hear us?” As soon as he said it he regretted his harshness. “I’m sorry, that was out of line, I-”

            “You’re entitled, you know.”

            James met Thomas’s steadfastness with confusion. “What?”

            “To react. Just because I haven’t had an easy time of it doesn’t mean you have to pretend you did.”

            James put his face in his hands. How could he even begin to explain?

            “Upstairs.” When James looked up, “I’ll fetch you a bath. Get back upstairs. You’re right we don’t have much privacy here, but for the next day or so at least- there should be a tub a few rooms down.”

            James rose, feeling defeated, and had one foot in the doorway before Thomas’s voice stopped him.

            “You said you wouldn’t let me out of your sight.”

            James pulled a half smile. “Was that not an order?”

            “I hardly think my senior experience working off imaginary debt gives me any right to tell you what to do, not that you’d listen to me anyway.” When James hesitated, “I’m fine. Really. I wasn’t at war two days ago.”

            “Try two weeks.”

            “James. I really am okay.” James knew that look. Worn it more than a few times himself. Let me take care of you.

            “Alright.”

            “I’ll be up in a minute. I promise.”

            He managed to drag the tub into their room before collapsing to the floor.

            “James!” Thomas rushed over to him, spilling plenty of water, by the sound of it, and drew him close. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

            James struggled for breath. Had to remind himself he wasn’t drowning. “You… gone… too long…”

            Thomas rocked him until he could breathe again.

            They didn’t speak for a while, Thomas ferrying buckets of lukewarm water up from the kitchen and taking much too long to pour out each one before going down again. James stayed on the floor, no longer shaking but keeping careful track of his breaths. He felt his muscles loosen as Thomas closed the door, clean clothes over his arm marking his last trip. When fresh covers were smoothed out and the clothes laid on top of them, Thomas pulled off his shirt, bent down for James’s hand, helped him undress, steadied him next to the tub. The floor was wet; it was soaking through the discarded clothes. Thomas had left enough room in the tub for both of them, James noticed.

            “You don’t mind?” Thomas asked, free hand about to undo his own breeches.

            James smiled. “I didn’t mind you undressing me. Or holding me through the nerves. Or- god, the things I haven’t minded. Why would I mind?”

            “I didn’t know if-” Thomas blushed a little, laughed, shook his head, repositioned his arm to use James as a balance, and slid off the rest of his clothes.

            “This place has served you well in one regard,” James said. Wasn’t even looking down. Just holding his eyes, daring Thomas to respond in kind.

            Thomas reached out to touch a scar on James’s chest, feather-light, and frowned. “You’ve been hurt so many times…” He saw the look on James’s face, “I’m sorry. Get in the tub.”

            “Much obliged, Doctor Hamilton.” But he accepted the help, offered some in return when he saw how Thomas winced as he bent his knee. “Time for that story?”

            Thomas settled down across from him, careful not to dislodge too much water. “It’s not much of a story. I was promoted from bedridden invalid to horseback a bit too quickly. Fell off the horse.”

            “My turn?” Too much hesitation in his voice for him to truly mean it.

            After all this time Thomas could still hear that and recognize it. “You don’t have to, James. I can tell you something else. We don’t have to talk about anything. Don’t have to talk at all.”

            James settled against the wrong end of the tub and looked down at the water.

            “We could talk about my nerves. In England I had attacks so bad they tied me to the bed.”

            Pain, rage, sadness, too familiar emotions-

            Thomas knocked their knees together under the water. “I got through it. I made it here. I only meant I understand. Better than you might know.”

            James sighed. “I can’t imagine-”

            “You don’t have to imagine. I don’t really want you to, though I know I can’t stop you. Same way you can’t stop me imagining how that sword went through your skin to leave that scar. Or the one just above it, a bullet wound, I’m guessing? I’m going to imagine all the same, and so are you. Maybe better agree it’s awful all around and not pretend the other of us has had the worst of it.”

            James stared at him in wonder. “When did you get so wise?”

            “I’ve spent the past ten years trying to achieve enlightenment, can’t you tell?” Then, “We could move. I didn’t mean for you to be cramped over there.”

            James shrugged. “It would appear you’ve also forgotten the soap.”

            Thomas offered a gentle kick and reached over towards the night table, where he had, apparently, placed the soap. “Come over here, at least. Granted your sensibilities aren’t too delicate for such risqué- oh.” James had nearly lost them half the water repositioning himself with his back to Thomas’s chest. “Alright?”

            James realized too late it might not be. “Is it?”

            That little laugh again. “It’s fine. Let’s get you clean before the water’s too cold.”

            “I’ve had plenty colder than this,” James said, and it bled into a story, and another, and by the time Thomas was helping him out of the bath he was chilled and exhausted again.

            Thomas pulled a shirt over his head, tucked the covers around him, got his own clothes on and held James from on top of the covers.

            “Aren’t you tired?”

            “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

            James felt a pang of worry even though he was already half gone. “You won’t leave.”

            “Never.”

            James slept.

            When he awoke again it was sunset. Thomas had lit a candle and was sat on top of the covers, book in hand, free arm around James’s shoulders. But the tub was gone.

            James tried not to sound accusatory. “You left.”

            “Only when I knew you wouldn’t wake. I poured the filthy water out the window. Randall’s sure to be annoyed when he gets back.”

            James rubbed his eyes, sat up. “When’s that?”

            Thomas shrugged, went along with James’s movement, brought his hand up to stroke his hair, eyes not leaving the book. “Tonight, tomorrow? No telling. As long as Hereford hasn’t gone out we shouldn’t have a problem. And they’re both easy on the new ones.”

            “I think we’ve already established I’m not worth the excuses.”

            Thomas turned to look at him. “Lucky for you he likes me.”

            James attempted to wake his brain. “ _Likes_ you? I thought he was your overseer. The warden.”

            “He is, yes. But that means something different here. Can’t hire a disciplinarian and expect the outcasts not to die of fright.”

            Nothing was ever that simple. “If they care about the men being afraid, why’d they send them here in the first place?”

            Thomas smiled. “Just because my father was in it to fake my death doesn’t mean the others’ families don’t pay well to keep them alive. Most of them think they’ve sent their children here for their own good, believe it or not. Some of them forewent the asylums and sent them here directly.”

            “But I don’t understand. If we’re so detestable, why bother?”

            Thomas’s smile grew soft. “Love does strange things, you know that. Besides, is it really so strange they’d want their children turned peasant instead of driven mad?”

            “I don’t know. I never had a family- after my grandparents, before you. And I was never gentry.”

            “You’ve seen love all the same.”  
            “I suppose you’re right.” James leaned to see the book. “What are you reading?”

            “A study of the local terrain.”

            “You really want to get out of here?”

            Thomas laughed. “Been here a bit longer than you. If you’re so eager to leave already what makes you think I won’t take the first chance I get?”

            James felt a pang of anticipation shoot through him, let it live a second longer than he normally would. “What are our options?”

            “A month of travel or a few days plus risk of capture.”

            James sighed.

            “We could always wait out our indentures.”

            “And how long would that take?”

            “Think it’s five years for me? Four and a half, maybe? They want to make sure all chance of us being recognized is demolished, then, if we’re lucky, they’ll consider releasing us. Granted family’s stopped paying, which mine I’m certain has by now. And I’m sure you could talk your sentence down. Randall’s a harder sell than Hereford, but even so. Maybe you could send for an advance from the pirates.”

            “Just what Long John Silver wants, me coming out of retirement to try and start a war again.” James shook his head. “Can’t exactly claim he owes me after everything we’ve done to each other. For each other. Though I suppose what matters most is that we don’t get recognized.”

            “Exactly the point of the indentures. Even if we did want to reclaim our names, how would we do it? How could we afford to sail to England, or get anywhere else someone might recognize us? This place isn’t even a proper colony. It may never be.”

            Another thing working against them. Any plan to escape had to include at least a week of provisions, and that was if the maps Thomas had seen were accurate. The only way that didn’t go straight back towards the sparsely-populated coast- in other words, exactly where Randall would expect them to be going- would take them through untamed land of which Thomas knew little and James none. The most likely scenario would be weeks of travel on foot, hunting for whatever food they could find. For that they’d need supplies. Weapons.

            Not to mention all the preparation time that’d take. “If you’re certain you want to do this, it may be best to get a few supplies before Randall gets back. He doesn’t seem the type to abide it, and this way we’ll have Hereford’s negligence to fall back on.”

            Thomas nodded. “Though he’ll no doubt connect stolen food to your arrival- or not food, what are we stealing first?”

            “Do you know where we can get guns? Without them being missed?”

            Thomas hesitated. “There’s a storage shed where the guards keep anything dangerous.”

            “How do we get in?”

            “Randall keeps the key.”

            Wonderful. “Any chance he gave it to Hereford in his absence?”

            “Maybe. Though I don’t have any idea where Hereford would keep it.”

            “Where is he now?”

  
            “Hunting, riding, taking in the countryside, how should I know? He can’t have gone far with Randall away, but his presence is hardly necessary at all hours.”

  
            “Will he be gone again tomorrow?”

  
            “Hopefully. Probably.”

            “It’s too late today. Don’t want to be halfway through searching his study when he gets in.”

            Thomas cocked his head, smiled. “You’ve done this before?”

            “Plenty of times. Though I can’t say I ever expected to do so under these circumstances.”

            “Can’t say I ever expected the circumstances, either. Though I’m more than grateful for them.” Thomas put the book aside, and pulled him close, and kissed him.

            James hadn’t felt this way in so long. Hadn’t thought he ever would again. “I’ve slept enough.”

            “I agree.”

            It was hot and close and if they hadn’t spent the better part of the day being quiet James would have cried out the second Thomas’s lips met his neck. He had not been dead, but resigned to the end of this feeling- being consumed by another person, wanting to consume them. He’d believed that part of himself was gone, dead and buried beneath Thomas’s headstone on the other side of the sea. It was written in their every touch, that feeling- I didn’t think I’d know this again, and for whatever Thomas had hoped, neither had he.

            When they were done they lay panting in the dark, chests pressed together, sticking in the heat. He could feel each of Thomas’s breaths, reminding him over and over, he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

            By the time James began to consider moving, Thomas was rolling off the bed, retrieving the less filthy of their old shirts from the ground and using it to clean himself before throwing it at James. He must’ve had the forethought to get their new clothes out of the way, because a second later he was pulling on his own clean shirt and climbing back into bed.

            James chucked the dirty shirt back into the pile and stared up at him. “You forgot my shirt.”

            “I did no such thing. When have you ever slept in a shirt?”

            “Seeing as you’ve got one on now-”

            “Shh,” Thomas said, and burrowed into his side. Pulled the blankets around them. “I’ll keep you warm.”

            James craned his neck to look at him, ran a hand through his hair. “Will you?”

            “Of course. And, if you can stand to stay awake a while longer…”

            “I owe you more stories?”

            Thomas laughed. “You don’t owe me anything. I simply thought it worth asking.”

            “Which one?”  
            Thomas frowned. “I don’t want you to have to tell me if-”

            “I’ll tell you anything. Everything, if you asked. Which one?”

            Thomas ghosted his fingertips over the bruise on James’s abdomen, turned yellow with weeks of healing.

            “I got that killing one of my own men.”  
            Nothing in his voice but polite curiosity, asking to know what James had eaten for dinner last week instead of- “Have you killed many of your own men?”

            “Hundreds. Nearly all of them, if you count every sacrifice.”

            “That’s not the same.”

            “I’ve still killed too many.”

            Emotion creeping in, “You don’t have to do that again.”

            “Killing? You don’t know that. When we escape-”

            “No.” James waited for Thomas to continue, “Leading men. Being responsible for their lives, their livelihoods, their safety. You don’t have to do that anymore.”

            “Have you given up, then? On my pirate republic?” He meant it half in jest; Thomas only knew a fraction of the story.

            His reply was serious, “Haven’t you?”

            Had he? Jesus, had he? Of course he had. The second he saw Thomas it crumbled into the sea, any remaining fight against Silver or the navy or England falling away. Nothing was left but Thomas. Nothing but Thomas and the broken man who’d given everything for a dream that was just and right and good and dead. One he’d drag from its watery grave in a heartbeat if he thought for a second there was any hope of it living again. “I’m tired,” James said. “I’m so tired.”

            “You can rest.”

            “For another day, maybe.” He tightened his arm around Thomas’s waist. “After that, it’ll be a while longer. Until we’re safe.”

            Thomas didn’t condescend or lie; he didn’t say ‘it’s safe here’ or ‘you’re done with all that’ or ‘no one will ever find us,’ because none of those things were true, and he respected James enough not to pretend they were. James may have a few days’ respite, but if Thomas could be located, so could he. And he wouldn’t classify his relationships with Silver, or any of the others from Nassau, as trusting. If anyone other than Madi showed up at those gates-

            “James.”

            He looked over.

            “We don’t have to do this now.”

            James hesitated. “Would it ruin our moment of peace for me to tell you something else?”

            “I know as well as you do how little time we have, now, at least. If you want to spend it talking-”

            “We don’t have to talk.”

            “James. We can do anything you like.”

            And at that, at hearing it, he knew what was best even though it hurt. “I’ve done so many things, Thomas. So many terrible things. I had to become another man- a person I barely recognized- just to-” he cut off, shook his head.

            “Remember when you came back? From the navy?”

            James exhaled. “Of course I do.”

            “Remember what I told you then?”

            James thought back, tried to find the words. “You told me it didn’t matter what happened while we were apart as long as I’d still have you.”

            “Yes.”

            “But it’s not a question of _me_ having _you_ , it’s-”

            “It doesn’t matter what happened. It matters for how it changed you, but I still feel the same. I still love you.”

            “God I love you.” James pulled him close, kissed the top of his head. “You know I’d give you anything?”

            “I don’t want it. Just you.”

            They lay there for a while. Thomas blew out the candle. A second later, “We’ll steal the guns tomorrow,” James said.

            “Tomorrow.” There was promise in his voice. “I know a place to hide them.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James thinks a lot in this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh this wasn't going to be a contained chapter and then I saw it was nearly 5k and was like... better post that on its own. Sorry for the wonky spacing in some places.

            James hadn’t slept so much- hadn’t been willing or able to- since before it all started.

            He opened his eyes to filtered sunlight and an empty bed; Thomas was sneaking in with a tray of food.

            “I’m sorry I left. Didn’t think you’d want-”

            “Chamber pot?”

            “Under the bed.”

            Thomas made an attempt to neaten the covers while James took a much-needed piss. “What did you find?”

            “Same as yesterday. And Hereford’s already left, so if you want to raid him today, now’s as good a time as any.”

            “After breakfast.”

            “Lunch,” Thomas corrected. “It’s nearly one.”

            “Haven’t slept that much in years,” James said. “Where’d you put my clothes?”

            “Why d’you need them?”

            “Because I’m not robbing a weapons store naked.”

            “Pity.” Thomas sat down on the bed and poured a glass of water from the pitcher he must have gotten at some point prior to the food, which was laid out on the night table. “Bad weather out east, so it’s likely Randall’s been delayed. Still, we should go sooner rather than later. A few hours from now and the majority of the men will have begged off work, so the guards might actually be paying attention to us then.”

            James finished washing his hands and face and went to sit beside Thomas. “Is it always like this?”

            “Both the men in charge are gone, and we aren’t real indentures.”

            “Real enough. In any case, if it’s this lax when no one’s around to discipline anyone, I doubt we’ll have too hard a time making it over the fence.”

            “About that.”

            James reached out to brush his knee. “How bad is it?”

            “Restricted motion. Lucky I can use the leg at all, if I’m being honest. The doctor was surprised I could stand without a brace.”

            “Silver lost a leg. Too badly damaged. He would’ve bled out otherwise.” James stared off.

            Thomas brought him back. “Like I said, lucky. Though there’s no way I can get over the damned wall on my own.”

            “You think going over’s the best way?”

            “It’s the simplest. Most of the guards are on the inside. The only others are two mounted men patrolling the borders and whoever’s manning the property gate up the road. Any natives of consequence know we’re here, and new arrivals usually arrive by horseback or wagon. No other way in.”

            “Wouldn’t mind some horses.”

            Thomas shook his head. “Too hard to steal, unless you mean to kill the mounted patrols and likely raise the alarm in the process. Besides, unknown terrain’s even more dangerous riding than it is on foot.”

            “I’ll have to take your word for it. Don’t do much riding.”

            “My pirate captain.”

            “Not anymore. My ship burned, crew shot as they were trying to swim ashore. And all that to be betrayed.” He met Thomas’s eyes. “You’re the only good thing. The only good thing to come of this.”

            “I’m flattered. Now eat something.”

            James took the lightness that was offered. “Right away, my lord.”

            Got himself a kick for that.

            James permitted Thomas to go downstairs again, and he returned with the news that the house was laughably empty for the second day running. The servants had all gone out to tend to other tasks, and the guards were more concerned about trading jokes with the men at work than they were about intimidating an apparently complacent new prisoner. When James snorted at this lapse in security, Thomas only shrugged. “Nowhere to escape to, is there? And, while arguably just, I can’t say the consequences presented for theft sound very appealing.”

  
            James raised his eyebrows.

            “Lashes. Between Hereford and Randall the men remain satisfied with our dreary lot. Or at least satisfied enough not to risk stealing. Even if someone made it over the gate and lived to see civilization again, what would he have?”

            “Much easier to stand this living than make your own,” James said. “So, most of the men have accepted their fates?”

            “Better to remain safe and fed here than risk your life and lose it in the process.”  
            After a few more minutes spent discussing the relative merits of their situation, they agreed a hasty escape remained the ideal option.

            “Let’s go for a walk,” James said. “Need to learn the area.”

            “Plan on going like that?”

  
            “I’d be much obliged if you’d direct me to my clothes.”

            Thomas sighed and gestured to the wardrobe in the corner. “Damned shame. I dreamt about this view.”

            Once both of them were decent- which took longer than initially anticipated, but no matter- they headed downstairs. James realized it’d be best to secure the weapons as soon as possible; they made a detour to Hereford’s study and found the keys in the first drawer they checked. If the opportunity to steal anything arose on the walk, they’d be prepared.

            Stretches of untouched grass separated the house and road from a patchwork of different crops; larger plots of corn and tobacco and sugarcane stood a distance from the house, while nearer at hand were herb and vegetable gardens. After learning which necessities grew best, Thomas explained, they’d moved on to experimentation, trying the most profitable staples on majority of the land and planting subsistence and variety on the rest. What they grew, kept, and sold had more to do with keeping the camp running than turning a profit. The inmates’ families had already ensured all those involved in the scheme were well compensated. Hereford’s true purpose in this particular location was testing the land’s colonial viability.

            “His majesty’s empire looking to expand its reign further south?”

            “I’m not sure yet. If a colony does start, Hereford’ll need more guards.”

            “No doubt.” James squinted at the horizon. “Where’d he get the bacon?”

  
            “We keep the livestock farther out, in that direction. Behind us are the outbuildings- servants’ quarters, stable, barracks.”

            “Is that where we’ll be sleeping?”

  
            “Once Randall gets back and determines you’re neither violent nor an invalid? Indubitably.”

            “Show me later. Where’s the shed?”

            “Behind the barracks.” When James stared askance, “The guards sleep there, too.”

            “If I didn’t have you imposing bedrest on me I’d’ve broken out in an hour.”

            “I don’t doubt it.”

            The guards were too distracted to notice- or more likely care- that the two of them had ventured from the house. While there were plenty of people performing daily chores in the vicinity, no one seemed to look twice at them. Of course, James could feel the stares boring into his back the second he turned away. They weren’t getting hold of guns too easily.

            “You’re going to have to do it,” he told Thomas. “Sneak around the back, wait for my signal.”

            “Which is?”

            “Shakespearean fuck you.”

            “How romantic. Shouldn’t be too difficult. No one gives a shite about anyone else as long as we all stay out of each other’s way.” It occurred to James all that statement meant. That Thomas had been there long enough to have become commonplace. That the relationships between the occupants of the camp were decent by necessity. That the thought of any man attempting escape was too far-fetched to be safeguarded against.

            James paced nearer to the storage shed, far enough to appear merely curious but close enough to get in the sightlines of anyone looking that way. He tracked the pairs of eyes on him- one, two, three, but three had gone inside. He needed more distance from the doors, and for that man to resume repairing the stable wall.

            At last, all distracted. He raised a hand to his face. Only way to make biting one’s thumb look contemplative. He willed Thomas to see it.

            Staring at nothing, facing mostly away from the shed, relying on sound and peripherals to tell that Thomas had gone unnoticed, that no one else had a chance to see him.

            He was in. They hadn’t discussed how Thomas would make it out.

            Well. Have to be quick.

            And he was, striding toward the barracks as James caught his eye and went for the door at the opposite end. He made it over the threshold to find the room filled with sleeping soldiers. Have to make it across to the next chamber- there was Thomas, easing the door open. Thomas jerked his head.

            James made his footsteps as quiet as he could. None of them woke. Thomas stood back, let him in, shut the door, and then he was crushing James against it, tongue pressing into his mouth-

            “Jesus,” James hissed when they broke apart. He could barely breathe, Thomas was hard against his thigh, the room had to be empty-

            “Sorry.” Thomas fell back on his heels.

            “It’s fine.”

            “Does stealing always feel like this?”

            It took a second for James to process what he meant. Then, “It- I don’t know. Did anyone see you come in?”

            “No.” Thomas stepped aside to let James sweep the room. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

            “No,” James said, and kissed him again. Until he could be sure Thomas understood. “We’re both of us thieves now, Thomas Hamilton.”

            Thomas breathed a laugh.

            “What did you find?”

            Thomas nodded towards the nearest cot. “Two pistols and as many rounds as I could carry.”

            “Will they miss them?”

            “Not likely. We’ve got enough spares to arm the men if we have to, but seeing as how the guards hardly ever use their guns…” he shrugged.

            “We ought to try and find a rifle.”

            “Don’t need to _find_ one. I was more concerned about hiding one. Not to mention getting it out of there without being noticed.”

            James bit his lip. “Do you think we could sneak back in tonight?”

            “Unnoticed? I don’t know. I’m not quiet enough. Don’t know how to be.”

            “I can do it. Though we’ll have to put the keys back in case Hereford sees.”

            Thomas, having heard his worry, “Randall won’t be back. It’s nearly sunset and there’s been no sign of him. Isn’t smart to make that journey in the dark.”

            James nodded, went over to inspect the guns. Not new. Perfectly serviceable, though. “Where were you planning on hiding these?”

            Thomas walked to the cot, bent down; he pulled back the sheet to reveal a tear in the corner. “We can rip this enough for the pistols. Without losing too much sleep, ideally.”

            James saw his point. Stuffing a rifle in there would mean sleeping on it. “If I can get a rifle, we’ll need to hide it somewhere in the house. Move it once we find a better place.”

            “I think there’s an attic over one of the bedrooms. Have to look tomorrow.”

            “Hope Randall doesn’t make it back too early.”

            “He won’t. And in any case we’ll have the day free. Hereford’s not going to kick us out of the house the second he gets back.”

            James searched his face. Found no hesitation there. “Alright.” Sat down on the cot, worn down again. “Too bloody tired for five minutes as a lookout.”

            “Grief takes time,” Thomas said, patiently, easily, sitting down next to him and placing a hand on his knee.

            “Just a minute.”

            “Alright.” Thomas sat with him until he was ready to pretend to be Flint again.

            Within the hour they’d identified an ideal spot to scale. One edge of the property had some trees inadvisably close to the fence, and failure of proper maintenance meant some of the branches were high enough for one to climb up and ease their way across. Thomas couldn’t climb for shit, so they’d be relying on James’s willpower to give him a hand up.

            “Doubt a few days’ imprisonment’s ruined your physique.”

            “It hasn’t.” And then, to underscore his point, “Come here.” Lifted Thomas off his feet.

            Thomas laughed. “So what’s the problem?”

            “The problem is I’ll be supporting both our weights from whatever position I manage to get on that fence or one of these trees, depending on which will do us the most good.”

            Thomas shook his head. “I can still use my arms, thank you. And you make it sound as if the lack of escapes indicates some unscalability on the fence’s part rather than a general lack of desire to escape.”

            “You can’t blame me for being thorough about this. Our lives do depend on it, after all.”

            “Fair enough.” Thomas hopped down, wincing a little on the landing. “We should get going. Not missing dinner two days in a row just because you’d prefer to hole up in our borrowed room.”

            “I’m not the one who suggested we spend the next few hours completely naked despite the inconvenience of bathing this far from flowing water.”

            Thomas cocked his head, smiled gently. “You’re not going to be able to stay, are you? Once we make it to the river settlements?” They’d agreed that was the safest place to go- west- if not the easiest.

            “I don’t know. I’ll have you. And it sounds like a big river.”

            “It’s supposed to be. But even so.” Took a few steps towards the buildings in the distance, looked back at him. “Are you coming, or do I have to drag you?”

            Dinner with the men was startlingly familiar. James’s past few weeks had seen meals eaten in solitude or near it, but the companionable dining scene before him then was indistinguishable from meals on the Walrus. Apart from cleaner men and a higher ceiling.

            Thomas asked if he was alright, of course, and James said he was, obviously, and Thomas fell back into conversing with his friends as if it hadn’t been a lie. He was so comfortable around them, so at ease. Another reminder of how long Thomas had spent in this place. Another sign that he’d settled into this life. And he was about to leave it all, convenience and safety be damned, just so the two of them could whisper sweet nothings in the hours before dawn.

            No. That wasn’t- this wasn’t a life. Not the kind of life Thomas had ever wanted before, though James knew well the siren song offered by stability. Robbed of his purpose, he’d taken the first chance he got at shelter. Even if this too meant imprisonment. He’d meant what he said to Vane that day in the house. James wanted this. Not _like_ this, never like this, always closer to what he and Miranda had had if still so far from it. But comfort nonetheless. Peace and security, someplace to come home to when night fell.

            All he’d ever wanted was to feel safe.

            Miserable though their circumstances may be, their safety, at least, was guaranteed there.

            James didn’t think Thomas was all too bothered trading the little hardship he knew for a more fulfilling life that was much more difficult. But he had to be sure.

            The thought plagued him all through dinner, and the reconnaissance James should have been doing- learning about the men and his and Thomas’s respective places among them- crossed his mind so infrequently it confused him. James understood why, now that Thomas was everything, Thomas’s feelings occupied the forefront of his mind. What James didn’t understand was why the identity he’d inhabited for so long wasn’t taking over. Appraising his surroundings shouldn’t be a secondary concern. Their very survival depended on it. Flint would not have hesitated, because Thomas would have benefited in the long run, because both of them would be better off for it.

            The situation demanded attention and consideration and caution and at that moment James couldn’t bring himself to care about any of it.

            “Are you sure you’re alright?”

            “I’m fine. Just familiar.” And that was true, and it got Thomas to shut up. And it hurt him much less than it would if James started saying everything he thought out loud.

            All you need to do is pretend, he reminded himself. All you have to do is get back in that mindset for a few days, and then- and then-

            It wasn’t going to be a few days. It’d be a month, more, even, of hard living and hunting and foraging and doing whatever was necessary not to die. James knew, _James_ did, all the versions of himself were intimately aware how little mercy there was waiting outside those gates.

            But what was a month? If ten years had come to that?

            They’d never be truly safe. They hadn’t been for longer than ten years, and James knew better than to think they could ever be again.

            Given all that up years ago. For Thomas. As Thomas had for him. And Miranda for both of them. Didn’t matter how hard he had to fight to keep it. And what was the point in fighting at all if he didn’t carry on?

            He couldn’t love Thomas and be safe. Accepted that years ago.

            As for what safety they could get, it wouldn’t be much longer. An insignificant fraction of the time he’d spent without Thomas, a sliver of the time spent thinking he was dead. No time at all and they’d be alright, even if safe was out of the question.

            James just had to make it a little bit longer.

 

            In bed that night he cried all over Thomas again and for all the concern Thomas allowed James to see he didn’t seem put-off at having to hold James for hours. Apparently one needed time to adjust to these things, and in the interest of letting James be this vulnerable in front of another person for the first time since Miranda, Thomas was taking it all as a matter of course.

            James was grateful for that. Wasn’t enough to get him to break down properly, tell Thomas half the things that were keeping him on edge, but at least it was enough to sleep.

            The next morning Randall rode through the gates to find Hereford, who’d stayed in that day in anticipation of his arrival, and James and Thomas, who were inseparable and sticking to the house in the interest of caution, all waiting for him in the parlor. Once Hereford had heard Randall was on his way he’d insisted they all meet. A slight shake of Thomas’s head indicated this was all for the best, and James went along with it all in the silence he adopted when conversation wasn’t required of him.

            Randall had different ideas about what was required of him. “Have you been adjusting well to life here?”

            “Yes, my lord. Save for the lack of water I doubt the experience will differ much from my time on the ship.”

  
            “I’m no lord. And surely you’re being too modest. Last I heard a captain’s duties extended far beyond the daily maintenance of the course.” Randall was prying, gently but none too stealthily. He was seeing what it would take to draw James out, to rile him.

            James had spoken with many men this same way. Had this same fight. For all the doubts he still harbored only one thing was certain: Thomas. That meant that the only thing that could draw him out, now, would be a threat to Thomas’s safety. Which he was willing to bet Randall wasn’t going to make, if their camaraderie was in fact stable. For the sake of the thing James pushed back a little, anyway. “A ship, a plantation, it all comes down to the same thing. Though I suppose this is a bit different from working for a wage.”

            “Working for board. That’s how I think of it. Imagine plenty of the men would agree, though Thomas’s entreaties for a book allowance suggest that attitude is far from ubiquitous.” Leaning back, easy, comfortable, smirking in a way that was more a smile. I know you know what I’m doing but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

            James had been letting Thomas lead the conversation; he hadn’t had to concern himself with where it was headed. Now that burden was shifting to him. But Flint wasn’t here. Only James. And James didn’t care what Randall thought of him so long as he didn’t appear to be a threat. Which he shouldn’t be, so long as Randall stuck to unsuccessful attempts to bait him. “I know plenty of men who’d be more than happy to trade the perils of the open market for such an arrangement.”

            “Do you?”

            Sure he did. Sent more than one to their deaths and cast plenty of others out of his way besides. “One meets with all kinds of people in Nassau, Mr. Randall.”

            “I was under the impression the place contained mostly pirates.”

            “Perhaps. But I doubt those pirates would take less offense to you presuming their interests the same than any selection of lords plucked straight out of London.”

            Randall smiled. More genuine. Enjoying the sport. “I don’t believe anyone warned me of your wit.”

            “Luckily I’ve been warned of your shrewdness.”

            Raised eyebrows. Didn’t dare glance at Thomas, though. “Is that right?”

            “I’ve eaten with the men. Spoken to them.” A stretch. Nonetheless. “I know if there is a man safe to cross around here it isn’t you.”

            Randall sighed. Sunk into his chair, like the fight was over. “When I heard some of your exploits I expected a man far more reckless.” Bait, surely.

            James pretended to rise to it. Hoped he was conjuring the proper expression. “You mean a man far more fearless.”  
            “I try to be kind to our charges here, Mister-”

            “McGraw.”

            “Mr. McGraw. Things seem to run much more smoothly when I have a good relationship with the men.”

            “You’re assuming I’d react poorly to your pointing out my fear of you.”

  
            Amused again. Who’s drawing who in now. “Fear of me? Need it be so plan?”

            “Mr. Hereford has assured me he intends us to fear nothing from him. As I am well acquainted with the necessities of maintaining order on a ship, I understand a certain amount of fear is in a leader’s best interest. You can’t fault me for being honest.”

  
            “No, I suppose I can’t.” Randall recrossed his legs, tipped forward in his seat. “Though I’m not sure leader is the most appropriate word for my position.”

            James remained perfectly mild. “What did you have in mind?”

            “Warden. I believe that’s the proper title, or as close to it as one can get here.”

             “Even so. Can’t maintain order without fear.”

            “I didn’t expect you to fear me.”

            James mustered every ounce of honesty he could, every panicked falling second in which he allowed himself to consider the possibility of Thomas being taken from him again. “I’d be stupid not to.”

            Randall studied him. Thought. Was about to say something else when Thomas said, “Mr. Hereford, do you think we should leave them alone? I quite feel as if I’m intruding on some grand philosophical debate and that my presence is most unwelcome here.”

            James fought the foolish urge to reach for his hand and tell him the opposite. God he was slipping.

            “If you’d like to return to the matter at hand, gentlemen,” Hereford said smoothly. Ah, yes. Best not press the issue now we’ve all been reminded of the pirate and he’s admitted some level of complacency.

            James could have laughed. How easy it would be to kill them both in this instant.

            “If you’ve quite recovered from the journey, Mr. McGraw, I suggest-”

            “You’ll have your spare room back before sundown.”

            “Excellent. I take it tomorrow would be an ideal time for Thomas to show you the typical duties here and how they are performed, if he hasn’t already?”

            “Certainly.”

            Hereford nodded. “Then I believe our business here is completed.”

            Randall held up a hand. “Mr. Hereford, I’m not sure I understand. You mean to tell me that no more discussion is required before you release this man to live amongst our charges? That he has been deemed safe enough to do so?”

            “Mr. McGraw has not caused the slightest disturbance since arriving here, and-”

            “My friends paid you well enough to incur the risk, Mr. Hereford, is that correct?”

            Hereford grimaced, no doubt at the wording. “More or less, I suppose that-”

            “Good.” James stood; Thomas followed without even a glance. “If you’ll excuse us, I believe there are a number of things Thomas has left to explain to me, and I feel inclined to enjoy a few more moments of rest before properly beginning my indenture. If Mr. Hereford will allow it.” A slight to Randall he hadn’t meant to make; might have to pay for that later.

  
            “Of course. So long as you’re going out tomorrow I can’t see a reason why-”

            “I’ll be out by sundown.” James led the way upstairs.

            The second the door was safely shut, “Are you alright?”

            “If I didn’t know you meant only love by it I’d insist you stop asking.” James collapsed into bed.

            “Seems that isn’t the case.”  
            “No.” James sighed, rolled to face Thomas where he stood in the center of the room. “I’ve found myself unable to act like the murderer I was for ten years and I’ve forgotten how to properly intimidate without him.”

            Thomas approached, sat down on the bed, placed one hand over James’s where it rested on the covers. “I’d think that might be reassuring.”

            James exhaled, a half-laugh. “Reassuring. When it’s the most certain way to protect us.”

            “Who says you’re the one charged with that duty at this moment?”

            James sat up, crossed his arms, opened his mouth, but-

            “No, hear me out. You’ve been protecting the lot of us for, what, twelve years? Fifteen? I think my turn’s more than come up. And I don’t care you were a pirate. Right now you’re James McGraw and you’re in an overwhelming situation and the very idea that you would be expected to maintain the façade after doing so for a decade- forgive me for thinking that’s absurd.”

            James smiled slightly. “I can’t fault your logic.”

            “I know you can’t. That was the point, darling.”

            “But how can I expect you to do all the work in this when you haven’t-”

            “I believe I’m well-equipped to get us out of this, even if some of your inhuman strength may be necessary to haul us both over the fence.”

            “We should be keeping our voices down.”

            “Why? Let Randall come up. If he tries to thwart our escape attempt I’ll shoot him where he stands.”  
            “Thomas-”

            “I am no longer the man who flinched away from violence. It is in me, same as you, and I will not hesitate to become whoever I need to be to get us both safely out of here.”

            James uncrossed his arms and slid down the headboard a few inches. “For so many years that was all I was.”

  
            “I know.”  
 

           “I was half-convinced those first few minutes that you might suggest we stay here. That I’d have to convince you, or-” he swallowed. “Wouldn’t have been so bad. After everything.”

            “Remaining here ceased to be an option the moment I realized I’d have someone to help me get out. I know better than you- no, no guilt, please, dear, let’s not- I know very well what makes a life worth living, and I unfortunately must report that with both of us alive this certainly isn’t it.”  
 

           “Thomas-”

            “Go back to sleep, if you like. I’ll avail myself of the uninterrupted reading time while I still can.”

            James rubbed his eyes. “We should talk.”

            “Done plenty of that lately.”

            “Still. I feel like… I feel there must be something I’m not telling you that I have to tell you before we don’t have the chance.”  
 

           “We’ll have plenty of chances.” Thomas put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, which, James noticed, had sunk down to rest on the mattress. “Sleep. I’ll wake you when the sun starts to go down.”

            James let himself relax into the blankets, shut his eyes. “I thought you’d insist we wait to leave ‘til dinner.”

  
            “You seemed very adamant about sundown. I’d hate to start a quarrel on our third proper day of cohabitation.”

            James laughed. “It is, isn’t it?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James thinks about the future. They finally leave.

            They pushed two cots together and resolved, by excuse of weather but truly due to the guns, to make do with one. No one seemed to care.

            Once James was thus moved in- having gotten some clothes from Thomas and stashed them in the shelf beside their beads- they headed to dinner, where James hoped to pay more attention than he had the day before.

            It didn’t go as planned, but, again, everyone was perfectly amenable, so James didn’t mind as much as he might have.

            He woke the next morning not expecting anything but that uncaring easiness. A general lack of expectation, he knew, would keep him from being surprised. This attitude came in useful immediately, as the first few words spoken to either him or Thomas upon their rising were, “You’re glowing, Thomo.”

            “Haven’t seen you this awake in weeks,” another man said.

            Thomas threw a pillow at the first offender and shot James a reassuring smile.

            The men were all awake by then, dressing next to their beds, and James remembered training, years and years ago, and how similar it had been.

            “He always this chipper when you’re around?”

            James started at being addressed, turned to the man speaking to him. “Not in the least.”

            “Figures.” The man pulled on a boot, then extended his hand. “Name’s James. This lot calls me Jimmy, though, on account of my fall from grace.” Jimmy was half a head shorter than him and dark-haired; at least there was little chance of anyone confusing them.

            “Ah, shut it, Jim. We call you that because you asked us to-”

            “Don’t listen to a word he says. Means to unseat me as best-loved indenture.” Jimmy shot a glare at the bearded man in question, who merely shrugged and continued dressing.

            “The only reason you’re best-loved indenture,” Thomas said from his seat on their beds, rolling up his sleeves, “is because you’ve got more stories than the rest of us put together.”

            “Shit.” Jimmy turned to James. “We have the same name, don’t we?”  
            “If anyone tries to call me anything but James I’ll break his nose,” James said nonchalantly. He added a smirk for good measure.

            “Where are my manners?” Thomas stood and raised his voice. “Gentlemen, in case gossip hasn’t already made it clear, this is James McGraw, my chief indiscretion whilst back in London. He was once a fearless pirate and before that a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, so I wouldn’t doubt his threat where breaking noses is concerned.”

            “Some of us are trying to sleep! Mind keeping it down?”

            “Some of us are trying to eat,” Jimmy said to the only man who hadn’t gotten out of bed, “which we cannot do until you come out from under those blasted covers-” and he crossed the room and yanked them off the bed, to many cheers.

            When James raised his eyebrows at Thomas, the latter shrugged. “Randall runs a tight ship, if you don’t mind my metaphor. We’ve all got to show up unless we’re ill.”

            Within fifteen minutes they were seated in a dining hall, eating large bowls of porridge as servants trickled in and out of the room. Both the indentures’ and the guards’ tables were full, and both appeared to be somewhat orderly.

            “We’ve got to be on time for breakfast but Hereford doesn’t make the staff follow a schedule?” James asked quietly.

            Thomas smiled grimly. “They’re not prisoners or the men paid to guard them, which I’m sure helps.”

            The day before James had feared being among these men all the time might be as jarring as it had that first night. Now, though, having been readily absorbed into the group, he found himself more at ease than he’d been in years. Being around the indentures was not like being around the Walrus’s crew, nor was it like navigating the political nightmare that would have entailed being around these men before they were sent there. All of them, like Thomas, had come from means and been forced into exile. Plenty for the same reasons Thomas and James had- whatever their behavior, it was unfit for civilized society, their beliefs too radical or their company too damning. These men had more in common with James than his entire naval regimen. Most of his crew, even.

            He almost felt bad leaving them behind, and he didn’t know a single one of them.

            James felt a hand on his knee and looked up to see Thomas’s concern. His voice didn’t waver as he said, “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

            “You sure?”

            “Yes.” James dropped his tone even lower. “Would it be rude to ask what landed the others here?”

            “Depends. Their stories aren’t so different from ours, like as not. I’ve learned something about them all in my time here. Enough to know who would welcome the chance to boast and who’d prefer to remain silent.” It was an offering.

            James didn’t take it. He shook his head, leaned to speak so quietly only Thomas would hear him, “I didn’t realize they would be-” he cut off.

            “More like us than anyone we’ve ever met?”

            James laughed. “Yeah.”

            “Oi, James McGraw- you want to be called James or McGraw, by the way?”

            James turned to the questioner, a tall, lean man with wavy locks down to his shoulders and a wary smile. “Either’s fine.”

            “Right then, McGraw, in the future we’d appreciate it if you didn’t keep your best jokes between you and your man. Whisper all you like, but remember we don’t get much entertainment around here, and-”

            “Hey!” Jimmy nearly shouted, apparently in indignation.

            “-everyone’s better off when we can have a laugh.”

            “What do I call you?” James asked.

            “The Governor.”

            “I’ll keep that in mind, then, Governor.” James left most of the mirth out of his tone, but was sure to indicate he understood the expectation being set forth. We’ll more than tolerate you so long as you have something to bring to the group. He had yet to prove his physical merit, and he doubted these men cared much for it; they were starved for contact with the outside world. The least James could do was share some of his own experiences.

            “Thomo,” the man across from them said, “how could you deny us the pleasure of this man’s company for three whole days?”

            Before Thomas could respond, James said, “I threatened to break your nose this morning and my company’s in demand?”  
            “Of course it is.” This man, a burly one with more beard than face, slapped his hand on the table. “I don’t go along with this cooperative nonsense the Governor seems so fond of, but a new man means new arguments, new conversation, and I, for one, am glad for the opportunity. Charles Smithe, pleasure to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.

            Breakfast went on like that, people readily insisting James’s presence was a gift and assuring him he’d find naught but friendship there. The atmosphere was caught between a gentleman’s salon and a pub around last call, florid language blending with crude comments, hearty teasing, raucous laughter. If these men were insane, they embraced it, and this attitude seemed so regular- unnoticed by guard and servant alike- that James knew his arrival had little to do with it.

            James knew nearly all the indentures’ names by the time they set foot in the field. It wouldn’t have been an easy thing, even on a pirate ship. But then, the men’s personalities were so vibrant, so distinct; James was amazed they hadn’t taken each other’s heads off long before he got there.

            “Necessity,” Thomas said as they retrieved their tools. “Not to mention there’s a mad sort of freedom in our confinement. All spirited here for the same set of reasons, therefore no need to hide them.” His face betrayed some internal debate about the notion, a final verdict yet undecided.

            For James there was no question. Even if they had company unlike any they’d known. Its worth was eviscerated by their inability to choose it.

            Their work that day- or at least the work Thomas steered them towards, given men were allowed to choose their jobs so long as the work was done- was digging and setting posts for a new fence to divide the livestock. Despite knowing his answer, James debated the issue of leaving the plantation all day. It gave him something to do other than wonder how to tell Thomas about his past. At lunch Thomas told him, “You needn’t worry, I won’t change my mind,” but even this assurance could not chase the specter of willing captivity completely from James’s mind. The place went against everything they’d fought for, so the question was decided; nevertheless, James understood why remaining on the plantation offered the others an amenable fate.

            The plantation defied everything James was. It defied all he and Thomas had stood for, all James had fought for, all Miranda had died for. It was a shining example of England’s worst qualities. Every bit of dirt James overturned reminded him he was not doing this for himself, or for Thomas, or for the greater good of the men or the future colony or England. James was sinking fence-posts because England couldn’t be bothered to consider its flaws. Better to send dissenters away, or kill them, than consider improvements that would be less than beneficial for their bottom line.

            No matter how wonderful it was to hear men discuss the great philosophers while doing labor no gentleman in his right mind would take on willingly, their work was helping no one but England. You, James McGraw, work in service of a regime that wishes you dead, no, nonexistent. A regime that would see its challengers destroyed before considering their arguments.

            At the end of the day, when James sat dripping from a recent rinse and exhausted by work and sun alike, he laughed along with the men. He joined in on jokes about Dante, listened to Jimmy’s yarn about talking an entire brothel out of arrest. He held Thomas’s hand, under and over the table, and learned to smile at jibes that were more good-natured and self-depreciating than any he’d heard in years. He ate all of his supper, drank the beer that came with it, and thanked the men for welcoming him into their fold.

            But James McGraw had determined long ago to never again serve a tyrant.

            And for as lovely as this place was, it still operated in service of England.

            So when Thomas asked that night, “Have you decided, my love?” James burrowed closer into his chest and said, “There was never any question.”

 

            Thank god it was the end of summer. James and Thomas would have had to sleep naked otherwise, because there was no way either of them was sleeping an inch away from the other so long as they were in the company of people who didn’t mind it.

            James settled into the pattern of the place, but the constant reminder of the guards’ presence kept him from feeling comfortable. He found himself becoming fast friends with the men, particularly enjoying the cutting wit that had earned the Governor his nickname.

            Thomas ransacked the library for information on the French trading posts that lay west, along the Mississippi River. If they didn’t make trouble, the chances of them being allowed to live in one were decent. What would the fur trappers care about having another two outlaws in their midst? The colonies were made of outlaws; so long they meant to offense, James knew their presence would be tolerated, if not welcomed.

            Their chief concern was preparing for the weather, and getting on their way before such preparations became life-or-death. Winter may be mild on the plantation, but it was deadly farther north, and Thomas’s readings provided only so much detail. Better to leave sooner than freeze to death.

            Thomas had assumed responsibility for reading and his share of stealing. Not to mention planning the journey itself, a task to which James could contribute only sparingly given his dearth of knowledge. James took care of the trickier sleights of hand, the occasional theft of a kitchen tool or a jar of food too small to be easily missed. Soon enough their spare bed was too hard even to sit on; they kept it pushed against the wall so no casual intimacy amongst the men revealed their stockpile.

            Casual intimacy was the second most important form of interaction for the indentures. Speaking with kindred spirits was one thing. Being all each other had was another. Most of them had no contact with family, and the ones that did correspond with relatives had an ocean to contend with. A select few maintained friendships with the most sympathetic members of their former lives. Those friends and Hereford’s loose tongue provided their only news of the colonies or England. In either case the information did little to help Thomas and James.

            They heard nothing about Nassau. Fortunately James had yet to work out his complicated feelings on the subject. Survival was their primary concern, and, so long as they intended to escape, the only thing that mattered was making it out of the plantation with their lives.

            It was the end of October when they were finally ready.

            “Sure we don’t need a rifle?” Thomas was worried about hunting food, of all things.

            James was more concerned about getting wounded or killed in the attempt to leave. “If I couldn’t make a competent trap I’d’ve died on more than one deserted island.”

            “Suppose you have a point there.” They were sitting in the shade of the tree they’d use to get over the fence. Over the month they’d established it as their spot; no one would question them being there, and it was unlikely anyone would bother them. It was easy to stash their supplies there disguised as a Sunday picnic. All they needed now was to slip out of the barracks unnoticed- or, better yet, noticed and thought to be off for a midnight fuck- and get across the grounds without drawing attention.

            They waited until the plantation was as silent as it ever got, night insects and heavy sleeping breaths the only sounds in the vicinity. With only the sky to light their way they’d had to choose a clear night with a nearly-full moon. The advantage it gave them in being able to see was worth losing the benefit of stealth.

            After wrapping up in all the clothes they had, including the coats neither of them had needed yet, they slipped out of the barracks and made for the shadow of the border fence.

 

            For the first few adrenaline-filled hours, James kept expecting someone was going to come after them.

            When no one did, the exhaustion learned from a month of not being on edge all the time began to sink in.

            They’d crossed every puddle they found on the off chance they’d need to obscure their trail, but James was fairly good at this; he had Thomas go ahead and covered their tracks as best he could.

            James knew better than to think the Savanna River- which they’d be following for some time, if all went to plan- would be safe to drink so close to the ocean. They had enough water to last a few days at most. After that, they’d have to hope the river was fresh enough or find a stream. Their other options were digging or rainwater. One would take time and the other luck. Though James was more than happy to slow their journey if it meant they weren’t drinking seawater, they needed to put as much distance between themselves and the plantation as they could before slowing their pace.

            Both of them had picked up bits and pieces of wisdom over the years that made James confident they could reach a decent-sized French trading post alive. He had some idea how to live off the land despite having rarely had to do it; Thomas had more than enough time to familiarize himself with whatever local plant life was documented on the plantation grounds through firsthand experience or Hereford’s library. Between them they could make the monthlong journey without poisoning themselves or starving to death.

            Ideally they’d have the opportunity to stop somewhere at least partly populated on the way. There was a newish English Fort, Moore, a little over a hundred miles upriver. If they could make it there within the week without incident, they’d be able to gather information about what lay farther west.

            While they walked they spoke of all the things they hadn’t back on the plantation. Hopes, fears, dreams, horrors, all of it absorbed by each other and the nothingness around them and bidden calm by the feeling that they were the only two people left in the world.

            In all the time between talking James thought and thought, because he hadn’t been given so much time to in years and he had more to think about than he ever had. A whole new life to make, from the ashes of the broken one.

            How could he reconcile all that Flint had done- all _he_ had done- with this person he so desperately wanted to be but who he wasn’t sure how to be again? He wouldn’t be exactly the same; nowhere near it. But at least the part of him that had wanted the freedom for this, for peace- that part he had to take back. It was still there, he knew, buried beneath mountains of rage and disappointment and the sheer will to survive, half-uncovered by the month on the plantation but difficult to see nonetheless. James still wanted that. Finding a way to want it outside the goal he’d held so long, outside the complete freedom promised by an independent Nassau- that was going to be the hardest part. “I let him win.”

            Thomas knew who he was talking about by then without having to ask. “I don’t believe that.”

            “No,” James turned to him. “I knew what he was trying to do and I didn’t do enough to stop it.”

            “It’s alright.”

            “People died.”

            “You did what you could.”

            “So many people died because of me. And I let him win.”

            “Did you?”

            James sighed. “I don’t know. I was just so tired.

            “I knew when it came down to it I couldn’t trust him to listen to me anymore. I’d always known, or else I wouldn’t have had to manipulate him so much in the first place. Wouldn’t have had to lie. But he was gambling everything I had left. The only thing I had left. He had to know that if you weren’t-”

            “But I am.” He touched James’s hand, lightly, reminding him he was there. Alive.

            “He knew that the only way I would give up was if I had something greater to lose. I wonder, even if you hadn’t been- would he still have told me what I needed to hear? He had to know that was the only way.” James shook his head. “Which of us is the better leader? The one who would let them spill their blood for freedom or the one who decided the cost was too high because he prioritized survival?”

            “You don’t need to do that anymore,” Thomas reminded him for the hundredth, thousandth time. “Right now there is this. Only this.” He took James’s hand.

            “But when we get somewhere…”

            “We’ll figure it out then.”

            James prayed they would.

 

            Fort Moore was a welcome sight. Unimpressive by eastern standards, the place probably required less than fifty men to keep it running. Makeshift structures with varying degrees of permanence were spread out around the stronghold. For a second the place was achingly familiar, resembling the shores of Nassau in every way but one. English soldiers were scattered here and there among the rest, talking and laughing and drinking like they were off shift. They probably were., James realized. Being stationed here meant living here.

            “I need to hide my face.” He’d had plenty of time to consider it on the walk, but they didn’t exactly have cloth to spare.

            “I’ll go into town first. Make up some name, use what I can to buy spare clothes. After I return we can go back together, make up a story about your burned face and-” Thomas cut off.

            “You think we should stay here a few days.”

            “It may be suicide not to.”

            “I agree. But see if you can get a tent while you’re at it- and make up some excuse for why I’m not-”

            “The burns are fresh. You got them yesterday and are too vain to set foot in town without them covered.”

            “God I love you.” James pulled him in for a parting kiss, and then Thomas was setting off towards the road, doubling back through the trees a bit so it wouldn’t be so obvious he’d been spying.

            James had almost forgotten what it was like to have a traveling companion even better at dealing with people than he was. Silver had, after all, let James take the lead until the end. Slick-tongued, certainly, but never quite safe to trust with the larger plan on his own. The last time James had felt so trusting- Miranda. The last time he felt safe putting his life in someone’s hands like that, giving over completely to their quick wit and knowing it would keep him safe.

            Thomas returned an hour later with bandages, fresh food, and a tankard of ale someone had insisted he bring James, free of charge, so long as they returned the cup.

            “How much did you spend?” The anxiety of Thomas’s absence was swiftly replaced by a different kind of anticipation: slim though the chances were, James might be recognized.

            “Not much. I figured I’d wait until I had your bartering skills to waste half our gold.”

            “How am I going to barter if half my face is covered with those?” James gestured to the bandages.

            Thomas smiled. “I can read your looks, you know.”

  
            James made no further argument.

            On the way to the fort, they’d discussed James not going into town at all, but Thomas reneged the second he saw the look on James’s face.

            Guilty though he felt about it, James couldn’t help but be grateful. He’d get to keep Thomas nearby, safe, and they’d spend the night in a warm tent.

            Though the residents of Fort Moore weren’t especially pleased by James obscuring his face, Thomas’s winning personality helped assuage their doubts. They bought a tent and proper packs, resolved to camp on the edges of the settlement while they got a few days of decent sleep and learned what they were truly facing the next few weeks.

            During the two days they spent among a mixed group of English, natives from probably ten or more independent tribes, French, and even a few Spanish traders, James trailed after Thomas as they gathered information. Following water seemed the soundest plan. They may be English, and thus worthy of suspicion from all sides, but fur traders passed through native settlements all the time. It was far safer to remain close to people- especially people less likely to kill them than a contingent of English soldiers- than venture into wilder territory.

            The Savanna River ended in the mountains that stretched north to form a makeshift English colonial border. Once they got to the other side, they’d be able to pick up the Cusatees River and take it all the way to the Mississippi. From there the only obstacles they’d face were any stray English soldiers or former pirates who might recognize James, not to mention the added benefit of increased distance from the coast.

            On the morning of the next day they packed up, thanked their hosts, and set off.

            James slept more soundly the farther they got from the last bastion of English control.

 

            It was less lonely, the closer they got to Cahokia. That was where they were headed. It was one of the better-established towns in the area, and not likely to be abandoned anytime soon. By the time they chanced upon a trader whose English was as good as his French, James had gone from his confused hybrid self, trying to navigate a new environment and a new identity, to the silent prisoner he’d been nearly three months past. Speaking when prompted, offering nothing in conversation with others and less than he ever had even in private with Thomas. James felt unmoored. The threat against which he’d defined himself for so long was unlikely to reach them there. Finally, finally, he was beyond England’s reach, and James didn’t remember how to be someone who wasn’t running from England or fighting it.

            Far from the hesitant respect offered by the natives they spoke to, the trader plied James with questions in an effort to break his silence. Finally Thomas could no longer stand it, made some excuse about feeling ill to beg off to their tent ten minutes’ distance away.

            He asked, as James knew he would, “Are you alright?” Looking for signs of distress, or injury.

            “I’m fine.”

            “You’re not ill?”

            James would consider lying about that if lying to Thomas had not been impossible from the moment they were first separated. “Not physically, no.” He lasted another second before cracking a humorless smile.

            Thomas wouldn’t let him off that easily. “No, don’t. Tell me what’s wrong.”

            “I don’t know.”

            Thomas waited a beat before asking “Is it nerves, do you think?”

  
            James laughed. He hadn’t had an attack in over a week. This didn’t feel like one, not really. “No, my darling, I can assure you it isn’t nerves.” Then again, come to think of it James couldn’t be certain of that. Among the thoughts that drove him into panic, the fear of madness- he and Thomas had yet to find a better word for it- was always one of them, now. A glancing consideration turned to a real threat: I will not allow myself to go mad became what do I have to live for but this became how can I be mad when despite having nothing I have everything?

            It would seem everything- Thomas- had less bearing on James’s sanity than he initially thought.

            “I may not be able to help you, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try.” Thomas drew his eyes. “Words would help.”

            “I don’t know if- no, that’s not it, I don’t know how-” James recognized the look. “You want me to try.”

            “We’re safer than we’ve been in fifteen years. I can’t help with nothing, you know that.”

            “You don’t need to help.” Before Thomas could protest, “It’s my mind. My problem.”

            “Has speaking to me about something ever made it worse?”

            James sighed. “No.” He searched for the words. “I fear I have no purpose. I feel adrift. I don’t- what will I do when it isn’t so hard for the two of us to stay alive?”

            “Ah.” Thomas sank to the ground, sprawled there like he had all the time in the world- he did, James had to remind himself, they did- and patted the spot next to him.

            James sat.

            “I’ve experienced similar crises of confidence myself, though I’m certain the intervening years have clouded my perspective a little.”

            How could James have been stupid enough to imagine- of course Thomas knew what he was feeling, of course this was familiar to him.

            As if hearing him think this, “I don’t think any less of you for not having spoken up before. I know as well as anyone what it is to feel alone in your head.”

            And wasn’t that a lovely prepositional phrase, because without it James would have protested that he couldn’t dream of loneliness with Thomas beside him. “You’d think after all the other times I’ve debated this same thing, after all the other times I’ve been forced to consider abandoning our goal… you’d think after all that this time wouldn’t come as such a surprise.”

            “You’re life’s been changed. Completely. Irrevocably. How could you have expected anything?”

            “It’s not just that. Thomas, I don’t think I can let it go.” It was the surest thing he’d said in weeks, the only thing whose weight of certainty could come close to ‘the sun is hot’ or ‘water is wet’ or ‘I love you.’

            Thomas met his certainty with fierceness. “No one’s asking you to.”

            “How could I possibly expect you to-” and no, that wasn’t right, wasn’t what he wanted to say, James interrupted himself- “We have nothing.”

  
            “Untrue. We have a tent, clean water, the knowledge and money to get us a wooden house in Cahokia, and each other. And you haven’t asked me to do anything, so as far as these expectations are concerned-”

            “I know you’d follow me back into hell if I chose to turn around and return to it.”

            Thomas let him sit with it for a moment. Let James feel the truth of his own words and the impossibility of them. Then, “Forgive me for thinking you’d never.”

            “I wouldn’t. I can’t. Flint is dead. But after all I’ve done, after all we’ve sacrificed, I don’t know if I can just be.”

            “You don’t have to turn your back on the cause forever.”

            “Thomas-”

            “No, I mean it, listen. Let us be safe and well and free. Let food be secure on our table and the lock on our door keep our enemies out. Let us sleep a few nights, rest a few weeks, and when we’ve learned how to feel free and safe again, when we remember what it is not to have a sword hanging above our heads, then, then, my love, we can begin to plan.”

            The realization of the truth in Thomas’s words- the concepts of safety and freedom being tangible truths about their existences instead of phantoms called up from a long-dead life- made him dizzy. They were safe. They were free. James couldn’t believe it. And even if he could, safe and free were a far cry from done. If taking up any gauntlet at all without risking everything were even possible. “Plan what?”

            “I don’t know. Anything. A new way to defy England beyond the ones we already know. A new way to live. I am only asking you not to put such a burden on your choices now. To be so inseparable from the life you knew before that you refuse to build a new one. You don’t need to think like that anymore. I’m not saying we give up. I know better than to suggest it. But please, please, allow yourself some rest.”

            “You want me to take a break from fighting the British Empire.”

            “If I didn’t know you capable of seeing reason I’d threaten to leave you otherwise.”

            God. For Thomas to even jokingly suggest- “Alright.”

            “Alright?”

            “I’ll try to think of something other than destroying England for a while.” James resolved to do it. For himself, for Thomas, for Miranda.

            He hadn’t felt this light since that first time Thomas had looked at him after James knew he loved him back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James figures out how not to be a pirate. Thomas starts getting a tiny bit famous in the safest way possible given their circumstances.
> 
> TW for a million mentions of madness, though it's just James being half-sarcastic in his head and is more a way for him to track his own mental state before the concept of mental health truly existed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wanted to post earlier but it's kinda long and I had to do at least one poor edit so here you go
> 
> as always call me out if anything's off, I did research so that all the stuff I'm suggesting *should* be possible based on what little we know of 1720s Cahokia

            The rest of the journey was uneventful almost to a fault. Thomas backed off completely after their discussion, giving James the opportunity to retire from piracy however he saw fit. That’s what he was doing. Piracy was retirement from the navy- or a promotion, in a twisted sense- and Cahokia would be-

            Cahokia would be safe.

            Their most dangerous encounters on the way there turned out to be upsetting a feral animal (dispatched before it could do any damage) and being caught behind a tree a little closer to a trading camp than they should have been (at which point the man who’d seen them merely laughed and went off to find a pissing spot elsewhere).

            When they finally set foot in Cahokia proper, it was to find the town mostly comprised of a pub, an inn, two storefronts, and a significant number of brothels. Every other business seemed to be run out of a temporary structure or a place of residence. What was more, the one Englishman in town, as the pub owner so kindly informed them, would be happy to help them find a plot of land if they really meant to stay for long enough to need one.

            The one Englishman in town, whose name, ironically, was Beaumont on account of his being only half-English, did them one better than a plot of land; he offered them a house on the spot. A trader had just decided to relocate farther south and sold back his house to the man who’d rented him the land in the first place.

            The ceilings were a bit low for James’s taste, though he’d scarcely had more headroom in his cabin on the Walrus. A bed dominated the left corner of the room, currently stripped of linens but sporting hooks in the ceiling to hang curtains, offering some privacy. There was only one chair, a hard wooden thing with a high back angled to appear moderately comfortable. There was a wash stand beside the bed, lacking a basin. Next to the wash stand was the fire, and on its other side a short wooden bench; most of the right wall boasted a similar bench, presumably serving as a kitchen. There was a small table at the chair’s left hand, large enough for perhaps a single set of dishes. The two windows were mercifully adorned with shutters like those on the buildings in Nassau. Their new English friend warned them they’d need to board up the windows or invest in curtains before the weather got any cooler.

            “Won’t need to worry about a mattress,” James said gratefully, going to sit on it.

            “We’ll want to air that out, of course,” Thomas said.

            “Not a problem. It’s yours as long as you’re staying here.”

            “Where might we find furniture?”

            Beaumont sighed. “Tricky, I’m afraid. Meg’s been known to sell her spares- she runs the largest establishment in town, practically an institution at this point. Might try her for another mattress, too, though that may need a bit more airing out, if you catch my meaning.”

            “Quite,” Thomas said. “And a table, chairs? Cooking utensils and the like?”

            “You need to rely on who’s trading in town for that. Or find someone to trade the things you need for whatever they want. Spare coin, maybe. There’s always building things yourself, or commissioning them. Though that’d cost more than Meg’s old furniture.”

            “And we’ll need plenty of lamp oil. Neither of us sleeps well, I’m afraid.”

            Beaumont laughed. “You’ll find plenty of that here. Last I counted we had fifteen brothels.”

            “Only fifteen?” James asked mildly.

            “Building another at the other end of the road. Woman’d make a fortune here.” Beaumont shook his head. “Well, if there’s anything else you need- food’s handled peculiar here, like I said, no one really owns the crops, we just-” he waved his arms. “Never seen anything like it before.”

            “We’ve seen our share of crops. Certain we’ll learn the way here,” Thomas said.

            “Indeed. I’m down the road if you need anything. Give us a yell if you do, and don’t be shy about the neighbors. Any other Englishmen around here and they’re like as not letting from me.” Beaumont gave a nod and took his cue to leave.

            Thomas ran a hand over the back of the chair. “We really made it.”

            “Yes.” James stood and opened his arms. “We did.”

            Thomas stepped into the embrace. “We’re really free. We’re really safe.”

           They owned nothing but their clothes, their bags, and a bit of stolen money- they didn’t even own their names, and yet- “Haven’t been this free since before I joined the navy.” No obligations to anything or anyone but the man in his arms? That was new. And wonderful.

            “Hardly past a decade for me. I can’t imagine.” When James pulled away, disgusted at his carelessness, Thomas said, “No, no, I mean it! I got to go traipsing around London until having a true purpose set me on a path. You-”

            “I was freer than any man here. As a pirate.”

           “A fugitive sworn to your cause? Quite different.”

            “I still mourn for that cause.”

            “But you have it.” Thomas gripped his shoulders, stared. “You have it. This. Right now. Liberty from England. Here you’re no one. Anyone.”

            “No matter where I go I’ll always be this.”

            “Perhaps. But here you won’t be killed for it.” And then, to prove his point, Thomas kissed him.

            The second they broke apart James looked to the window. The shutters were closed.

            “We don’t have to worry here,” Thomas said.

            “I doubt very much these men will-”

            “These men?” Thomas laughed. “My love, these men care for nothing but the security of their next meal and the news that comes with the next trader’s goods.”

            James frowned. “If you think being distracted will-”

            “It’s nothing to do with being distracted. I saw others. On our way in.”

            And instead of denying it, insisting it was a mistake, because he was so full of stupid stupid hope at the thought, “You did?”

            “Yes. Lovers, I’m certain of it. Lying in the grass, touching like- even Miranda and I couldn’t, James, wouldn’t dare even with only friends around-” he shook his head.

            “If they thought they were hidden…”

            “I saw them from the road.”

            “Nothing’s that easy.”

            “Scarcely a woman around for miles and no one around to care? Must you count the brothels yourself?”

            James sighed. He’d seen signs, on a few ships, noticed looks that other men had either missed or ignored. Not to mention Eleanor’s very visible relationship with Max, or the handful of others that were allowed, if not acknowledged the way he and Thomas had been on the plantation. “I want to believe you.”

            “Do. And if I’m wrong we’ll make it us, and draw swords on anyone who challenges us.”

            James snorted. “I’m afraid I’m a bit out of practice. You, I imagine, more so. Not to mention neither of us owns a sword.”

            “You’re right. But order wouldn’t be maintained if the people here didn’t handle their own disputes.”

            “This place is technically French territory.”

            “Last time I checked they were much less scandalized by sexual indiscretion.” He meant it. God, Thomas meant it.

            And he had a point, James knew, but they were so exposed already. “I don’t want to lose what little we have for something as meaningless as pride.”

            “That’s not it. You know it’s not. But if you don’t want-”

            “I’ve always had to be more careful than you.” Farther to climb, farther to fall. How untrue it had been, in the end.

            “I know.”

           “And I-” James caught his breath. “Much though I’d love to stop caring I don’t know that I can.”

            “It’s alright. Really. Stupid of me to suggest it. We’ve only been here a day.”

            “No. It’s not stupid. Maybe…” James considered it. “Maybe that’s how we’ll know we feel safe and free enough. When we’re willing to duel over something as trivial as touching in a pub.”

            “We needn’t. I’m so starved for life I push you over stupid things-”

            “It isn’t stupid,” James said. _I remember._ “That can be how we know.”

            “Really?” From the cautious hope in Thomas’s voice James knew he knew the line, the note, scrawled in a book and gone up in flames, or abandoned on a sunken ship.

            “Yes. We’ll hold hands in the pub. That’s how we’ll know we’re ready to- what is it we’re doing?”

            “Taking down the British Empire, of course.”

            “Right. We’ll know it’s time to do that when we can hold hands in a pub.” James shook his head. “I’m being quite ridiculous.”

            “No you’re not. I like this idea. It feels fitting.”

            “I take it we aren’t going to buy you a bed, either then?”

            “What, for appearances? Who exactly are we entertaining? And of course we don’t need another bed, that one’s mine.”

            “I sat on it first.”

            “Could you be persuaded to share?”

            “I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

 

            The residents of Cahokia may not be as well-versed in the classics as the indentures had been, but they knew how to appreciate a good joke. By the time Thomas and James managed to convince them they were staying for a while, they welcomed both with a fair bit of teasing and a much easier attitude than even the indentures had demonstrated. The freedom of the New World, it seemed, made fast friends of anyone willing to share a drink and a story. It probably helped that Thomas’s natural effervescence blunted the effect of what he called James’s murder stare.

            “I don’t want to kill anyone. Not anyone here, at least.”

            “I know that. But you’ve done an excellent job of transforming your concerned seafarer look into one a tinge more menacing.”

            “I don’t think the words tinge and murder go together.”

            “Where’s your literary spirit?”

            “Suppose I could’ve left it on a boat somewhere.” James felt a sickening sense of truth in that. Felt the shame stalking him, illogical, nonsensical- you are safe here, you are safe here, it’s not your fault Miranda’s dead- he took another swig of ale. Loathe though he’d been to waste time and coin on proper inebriation for most of the past few years, James found Thomas was just as pleasant drunk as he was sober. More so if you counted James forgetting all the deaths he’d caused.

            “I am exceedingly glad you didn’t leave the rest of you on a boat.” Thomas’s hand found his thigh. “I’m sure if we try hard enough we can get your literary spirit back.”

            James shot him a warning look. “Thomas.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry, was that you? I’m afraid I got our legs quite mixed up, excuse me.”

            James sighed. He didn’t mind Thomas’s wandering hands when they were drunk in private, but- “We’ve only been here five weeks.”  
            “And I still haven’t found a mattress, imagine that.” He wasn’t well and truly sloshed, but James knew that glint in his eye.

            Best not keep them there a second longer. “Let’s go home.”

            “But I was just beginning to enjoy myself!”

            “I’ve carried your drunken arse one too many times. The least you could do is support some of your own weight for a change.” That got the jeers James was looking for. He stood, hauled a still-mostly-sober Thomas unnecessarily out of his chair, and began stumbling towards the door. The second they were outside, “You couldn’t have helped a little, could you?”

            “Absolutely not. If I’m to be the drunken husband you have to do all the work.”

            James stopped in his tracks, cutting off Thomas’s smile in his haste.

            “I didn’t mean-”

            “No,” James said, and pulled him in for a brief but filthy kiss right there in the middle of the street. Fucking dark enough outside anyway.

            Maybe James was a little drunk.

            “Oh,” Thomas said, sounding dazed. “Suppose I should call you my husband more often, then.”

            How else could he account for the dizziness, the absolute weightlessness he felt when Thomas said it even though James was still sick with uncertainty about so much? “I believe you called yourself my husband that time, though the effect seems to have been favorable nonetheless.”

            Thomas hummed. “I was worried you’d think only of our wife.”

            Struck upon it like he always did, unintentionally, or too observant. James kept his tone even, emphasized the first word to make it clear what he meant. “Our wife?”

            “She was married to you nearly as long as she was married to me.”

            Sickness again, too long on land, you should be the dead one. “We didn’t. We couldn’t.” God. He must be drunk. Or losing his mind.

            Thomas’s words were soft, gentle. “I would have been more than happy to hear of it, had your guilt allowed it.”

            James hoped he was drunk. He didn’t want to have come so far only to go mad immediately upon achieving some semblance of stability with Thomas. “It wasn’t right.”

            “I think you’re wrong. But I know.”

            They’d made it almost to the house by then. James found he was shaking, Thomas holding him up more than the other way around.

            Thomas pulled the key from James’s pocket and let them in. “Let’s go to bed.”

            “Alright.” James kissed Thomas until that feeling overwhelmed ‘Miranda isn’t here.’ “Alright.”  


            Waking up to wind and quiet was very different from waking up to the sound of the sea.

            James hadn’t heard the sea in months, but he would always remember it, lapping up against the sides of a ship or slipping over the sand and rocks of the coast. He’d never had that and this at the same time. Those two things- the sound of the ocean and Thomas’s heavy sleeping breaths. James wanted to know what it would feel like, to have Thomas in their bed and the ocean just outside their window.

            “What are you thinking about?”

            James continued stroking his hair, absentminded. “The sea.”

            “How predictable.”

            “You never seemed to mind.”

            “No.” Thomas tipped his head back to catch James’s gaze. “Wonder how much of that’s just me knowing you.”

            “Wonder.” James leaned down to kiss his nose.

            “We should get up.”

            James groaned.

            “We aren’t even properly hungover,” Thomas insisted, springing up and taking one of the blankets with him. “It’s freezing, anyway. Need to fix the fire.” He got it going again and put some water on to boil. “There. Now we’ll have tea. Or coffee or… something. Do we have tea?”

            “It should be there.”

            “Ah. Yes. We’re going to need more water, though.”

            “Pity.” James sat up. “I was under the impression you preferred I not get dressed.”

            “Who says you’re getting the water?”

            James looked at Thomas, then down at himself, then back at Thomas. Murder evidently required a bit more muscle than farm work, gorgeous though Thomas was.

            “Point taken.”

            When James got back with the water Thomas was at the bigger table, one James had earned from Meg in exchange for fixing every loose hinge and rickety railing in her building. Thomas had a mug of tea pushed off to one side and pages sprawled out in front of him. More often than not their table was cluttered with Thomas’s work; he’d sent narratives to every trader who would take them, and they’d gotten a few messages back containing modest sums and even a few requests for more.

            James was perfectly satisfied putting his hard-earned strength to use doing odd jobs where he could find them, but it was nice to see Thomas working on something, enjoying it. “Are you sending any out this week?”

            “Piles and piles. After both I and the publishers paid a courtesy fee to the traders, they’re plenty willing to deliver a few sheets the next time they reach civilization.”

            “This is civilization.”

            Thomas sighed and looked up. “I am well aware that my standards regarding the word are ridiculous and that millions are more satisfied than I am now with much less civilization than this.”

            “No. I mean, yes, but I understand. Life was a bit more exciting when I had ships to raid.”

            “You don’t seem unhappy.”

            “Not in the least.” He wasn’t. Crazy, maybe, if the night before was any indication, but who wasn’t? James was not so naïve as to think madness belonged to only those who made it known. He joined Thomas at the table with his own cup of tea and glanced at the nearest page. “This is good. Ask for more money next time.”

            “From men who’ve never met me?”

            “Add a letter of introduction. You know they’d pay ten times what you’re getting for someone with a well-known name. A few months of this and you can be that name.”

            Thomas looked up again. “You really are amazing, you know that?”

            “We were discussing how amazing you were, actually. But I mean it. This is something. Something valuable, fresh, and… I’ll write it. The letter of introduction. Who should I be?”

            Thomas cocked his head. “You don’t suppose they’d listen to my wife?”

            “They don’t know you yet. Don’t trust you. Who here would they trust?”

            “A missionary.” Thomas had a point. Most of the people in Cahokia who didn’t spend half their earnings on tits and alcohol were there to convert the Indians.

            Though the thought of pretending to be a missionary was hardly pleasant. “Must I?”

            “I’m serious and you know it.” Thomas was right. Why was he always right?

            “Fine.” Better to have someone right around, if you were mad, James reasoned. He sought out a blank sheet and a pen. “Who am I writing to first?”

 

            Over the next few days the cold set in for good, and Thomas redoubled his efforts. James wrapped up in the coats he’d purchased since arriving and offered to chop wood for anyone remotely willing to pay him for it. The shorter days meant they needed more lamp oil for Thomas to keep writing, not to mention all the damned blankets they’d bought that week alone. James didn’t mind the cold as much as he’d thought he would; working in it was much easier than walking through it, and he suspected if he spent much more time in their tiny cabin he’d have been mad for certain by spring.

            Not to mention how much nicer it was being cold and dry than cold and wet.

            As for the madness, James had decided to take it in stride. He talked to himself a bit more than he would have liked, while working, and had too many nightmares for Thomas to sleep through the night, either, but being in Cahokia seemed to be having some positive impact on him. He wasn’t catatonic like he’d been on the way there, nor was he grasping and desperate, like he’d been one too many times on the Walrus. No, James was fine. Crazy, definitely, absolutely out of his mind by Flint’s standards. Luckily Thomas was better company. Didn’t mind at all when James said something ridiculous or refused to get out of bed for two extra hours or kept a stray animal under their kitchen bench for a month until it was well enough to fend for itself in the cold.

            He was even happy to take James out, raving through he may be, when it was warm enough outside to make it to the pub without one’s toes going numb.

            James still insisted on dragging them both outside for anything as suggestive as a peck on the cheek. Even so, “Progress is progress,” Thomas insisted.

            “Right,” James said. He let himself be half-drunk for about the tenth time since they’d moved there, and agreed to waste good oil that night to properly make love to Thomas, and in the morning when his eyelids felt frozen shut and the sound outside his window was not light bustle or rolling waves, but violent wind, James moved his hand a bit to the right and found Thomas passed out next to him and decided that even though their being naked was supremely stupid he didn’t really mind because, this, this right here, really was alright.

 

            James befriended a few of the men in town, Thomas a handful more. It turned out Thomas’s eyes had not deceived him on that first day- Ansel and Raf had come from Spain by way of France, fleeing Ansel’s well-off but not titled parents and their insistence he abandon his ridiculous fantasy and become a respectable merchant. Ansel insisted his sister was up to the task and left his family to work it out themselves.

            “She’ll probably get about a week of training before they marry her off, but at least they’re picky enough to let her choose.”

            “God, I would have loved a sister. Evidently the single heir was more than enough, unsatisfactory though I turned out.” Thomas laughed and shook his head. He was lounging on the sofa in Raf and Ansel’s small-but-plenty-big house- they’d been in Cahokia for a year and a half and had become a fixture of the town.

            Raf spoke about his past as much as Silver had, which, combined with the hair he kept tied back, didn’t always make James keen to see him, but they were lovely company and he could put his damned head in Thomas’s lap in their presence without either of them batting an eye.

            Not that they ever really did that. Apart from the first time they’d come over, gotten spectacularly drunk, and fell asleep in piles of blankets on the floor.

            Presently James had a hand thrown over the back of the sofa behind Thomas, close enough to touch his neck but not there all the time- Thomas didn’t like- and that alone was- “Are parents mostly shite?”

            Raf shrugged.

            “I think I was a special case. I’m sure yours would have been lovely,” Thomas insisted.

            “Mine aren’t shite, they’re just… narrow minded? God, I never know the word. Traditional? When everyone else despises you what’s a little distaste from parents who already think you’re mad to go to school, or heaven forbid, Spain.”

            “Damn good thing you came to Spain. I was getting bored.” Raf had his feet on the coffee table, his shirt a little open because he was so close to the fire, and the way he looked at Ansel made James understand ‘safe’ and ‘free’ in ways he never quite had before.

            “My grandparents were fine. Didn’t care much about heirs. I expect the piracy would have disappointed them far more than anything else I’ve done.” Despite having alluded to his past, James didn’t dare share anything substantial with anyone else. He could have, maybe, on the plantation, but he hadn’t wanted to talk much at all then and there had been the fence keeping them all in where here they could just- “I’m sorry about your father. Did I ever tell you that?” He turned to Thomas.

            “He was awful.”

            “Still your father.”

            “Must we discuss this now?”

            “No,” James said.

            But Raf was laughing. “If you need us to step outside-”

            “I’ll not, it’s bloody freezing,” Ansel interjected.

            “- by all means, friend, say so. You need not fear to speak in my house.”

            “Nothing to speak about.” Thomas was staring at James. “We’ve already discussed this, I believe. At length many years ago.”

            “Two sentences isn’t at length-” James began.

            “But it’s enough?”

            James sighed. “Yes.”

            “Good then. And I’d say the same of our house, Raf, but I’m not sure the single chair-”

            Raf waved the comment away. “You have to share one room with a former pirate. I get a merchant’s son and two more rooms besides.”

            “Even so, you must come over for dinner sometime. Pirates are very good at cooking, it turns out.”

            “Only some pirates,” James interjected, after which the discussion became a debate on how best to roast a pig.

            James fell asleep that night feeling very safe and very free.

 

            The entire town rallied for the holiday, filling Meg’s brothel to the brim and bringing whatever food could be found for the occasion. Cahokian farming was, as Beaumont said, cooperative, and as such the concept of sharing one massive Christmas meal in a building warmed by fire and body heat seemed far preferable to shivering with whatever small repast could be assembled of a winter evening.

            James had almost forgotten about holidays; pirates didn’t decorate trees, and he hadn’t seen snow in a decade before the first snowfall in Cahokia. “What’s the occasion?”

            Beaumont shrugged. “Christmas, new year, the winter solstice, what have you. Plenty of Catholics here, though you know we have all kinds.”

            “What should we bring?”

            “So long as it’s fresh I’m sure it’ll go.”

            James smiled. “I won’t try too hard, then.”

            He tried a little anyway, and the cakey bread he’d borrowed Meg’s oven to make was appreciated.

            He was sitting on a low sofa at the edge of the room, leaning on the arm and watching the merriment continue around him. A blonde woman- Nettie, he thought her name was- was perched on the piano bench, playing something lively enough to dance to but not so lively as to offend the overtired ear. Thomas was chatting with Ansel and a few others at a table across the room, smiling and sipping from mismatched glasses. Beaumont was stationed by a pillar, having a vehement discussion with three women whose combined argumentative powers far outstripped his own. Meg lounged in a corner chair, an ideal vantage point from which she could keep an eye on things and direct her husband, Paul, to take care of anything too small to allow her to abandon her post. Raf was carrying on a spirited conversation with another man in faster Spanish than James could track, though he guessed they were discussing some king or other.

            Six or seven couples spun around the free space between tables, keeping time with Nettie’s music. The constant motion of the townspeople combined with the roaring fire to banish all traces of chill from the room. James thought back to the few nights on Nassau that had felt like this, him and Miranda posted up at Eleanor’s after a good prize, men drinking and laughing and even singing in celebration all around them. It had felt nice, then. Felt nice here, now, with Thomas a stone’s throw away and plenty of friendly faces present besides.

            Raf completed his discussion, drained his glass, and spotted James. After a parting stream of profanity, he headed towards James. “I’m telling you. As bad as the English.” He fell onto the sofa. “I mean no offense, of course.”

            “I haven’t considered myself English in a very long time.”

            Raf inclined his head toward Thomas.

            “No. I don’t think he’d mind it, either, even if he is feeling particularly English today.”

            Raf shook his head. “Mine’s proud of it. I’m surprised he doesn’t insist we move east to better serve the colonies.”

            James shifted his gaze to Ansel, whose head was tipped back in laughter. “Loyalty’s a funny thing.”  
            “Don’t need to tell me. I suggested we stay in the Spanish countryside, not another soul around for miles, and he insisted we come here anyway.”

            “We may head east. Someday.”

            Raf grinned. “Can’t be a famous writer from here.”

            “It’s not that.”

            Raf raised his eyebrows.

            “We need to know what’s happening. To know if- when someone rises against England again.”

            “You mean to support them?”

            James sighed. He’d had plenty of time to think about it. Plenty of time to figure out exactly where he stood, so long as his and Thomas’s lives weren’t at stake. “I mean to try.”

            Raf shook his head again. “Loyalty. No better than a crown in practice.”

            “Hardly think it’s a lost cause, though, rebelling against those who’d have us hanged for loving them.”

            Raf sighed. “Maybe. But look at the world. Look at all there is to be done, to make it better, bearable, even. Why take on all that when you can have this instead?”

            “Can’t be satisfied knowing how many people suffer while I do nothing about it.”

            “I can see why you joined the navy.”

            “Prefer to think of it as why I left.”

            “Wise.” Raf stood. “Be careful out east.”

            “We aren’t leaving yet.”

            “Even so. Be careful.”

            James grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

            “You English know nothing about happiness,” Raf countered, and went to join Nettie at the piano bench. He played like he’d known how since boyhood. Maybe he had.

            James couldn’t remember a better Christmas.

 

            They reached a state of hibernation; Thomas had stored up a comfortable sum of money, and James’s aching knees decided February was quite late enough in the winter for people to go back to chopping their own firewood and repairing their own shutters.

            They lazed around in blankets, supplementing their food supply with whatever one of them had braved the cold to go find, talking and reading the four books they’d managed to buy and using inadvisable amounts of Thomas’s paper and ink on things that would never, never see the light of print.

            They weren’t doing anything important, in other words, when Thomas turned away from where he’d been peeking out the window at what would godwilling be that winter’s last snowfall and announced, “Our son would’ve gone to Eton.”

            James raised his eyebrows. “Really?” He set his book down on the side table. Read it ten times and had a feeling whatever discussion they were about to have would be considerably more interesting.

            Thomas spoke with the authority of someone who was not wearing a blanket as a cape. “Absolutely. And if we had a daughter she’d be educated at home.”

            James leaned forward, hands on his knees. “I think there are a handful of things it’s better to-”

            “Nonsense. I have it on good authority from Miranda that an educated home is far preferable to some half-assed finishing school. And if you have a problem with Eton I hardly see how you’d think a girls’ school was a good idea, let alone any school, come to think of it.”

            “Exactly. Keep them both. At home.”

            “Notwithstanding the hole you poked in your argument by immediately changing it, why exactly do you think home would be preferable to school?”

            “Because the three of us put together know more than any schoolmaster and keeping children secreted away where their parents can’t know them and they can’t experience the world is… well, if I had a say, and I think I would, I’d prefer them to know us.” James realized the truth of it as he spoke.

            And the way Thomas looked at him- wonder and pain both at once. “I think any child of ours would want to know you. Deserve to know you.”

           James shook his head. That was a dangerous path to go down, cooped up in the house with nothing to do but read and pretend he hadn’t gone mad. “Doesn’t matter now. Not to mention the political nightmare if-”

            “I wouldn’t care. We’d leave. Or already be in Nassau by then.” Thomas was serious. Refusing James’s attempt to change the subject, like it wasn’t insanity to suggest-

            A wave of pain so great James could hardly stand. An image of the three of them, four, five, happy and safe in the sun. James gave in. “We’d need a bigger house.”

            “What was it like?”

            “Three rooms. Guess you could call it more, but the front was all open- the kitchen, the table, a parlor with a piano and- would have been perfect for the three of us.”

            “You wouldn’t mind one bedroom being half study?”

            “One bedroom? The whole house would’ve been like that. Every free wall would need a bookshelf.”

            “Would you have made them for me?”

            “Absolutely not. You’d have had to find a proper carpenter or have them shipped from London.”

            “So unreliable. Unless I had you do the shipping.”

            “I might not have a ship.” He said it with no regret, and little sadness; in this future he didn’t need a ship, not anymore.

            “You’ll always have a ship.”

            “I don’t now.” James was surprised how easy it felt, how calm. Once he got past the hole of the loss, just fact, observation. If this was madness, this calm, he could understand how the men on the plantation had embraced it.

            “I expect there’s some skiff or other looking for a captain.”

            James felt his grip on sanity tighten to a stranglehold as he opened his mouth to utter his next words, that he would not, under any circumstances, exchange the sea for this. “Thomas-”

            “You’re wasting away here. You need to do something, lest we both become shut-ins.”

            “You’re not a shut-in.”

            “Close enough. Sometimes I think we should move to a proper town.”

            “Fuck town.”

            “Yes, fuck town, but you need to see more of people and loathe though I am to admit it so do I.”

            James sighed.

            “Are you afraid of being recognized?”

            His melancholy turned to a snort. “For what, exactly? Being the Englishman in town who speaks the worst French?”

            “Your French isn’t that bad. And we don’t have to go somewhere French.”

            “I’m no Englishman,” James said, allowed himself to feel the truth of it. Flint or not the only old home ne knew was Nassau. And that one half a home at best, filled with the ache of not having Thomas and never seeing Miranda and when, when, when. “And I’m happy enough here. Don’t need to be captain of anything.”

            “You need to do something.”

            “Something that takes me away from you? Never.”

            “You don’t have to give it all up just because of this.”

            James looked around at the room, at the piles of paper on the table, the hastily-made bed, the teapot sitting newly washed beside the sink. The words ‘captain’ and ‘lieutenant’ and ‘pirate’ all felt wrong in this room. “I’m not giving anything up. All that… I did it all for this. And now I have it.”

            Must’ve recognized the look on James’s face, because Thomas gave him time enough to process the feeling- free and safe- before speaking again. “Still think you should do something more interesting than puttering about the house all day.” Thomas stepped closer, wrapped his arms around him.

            “What would you suggest?”

            Thomas’s voice was muffled by his shirt. “I don’t know, learn how to make those bookshelves you keep promising me?”

           “I don’t think the contents of a fantasy conjecture count as promises. Not to mention we only have four books.”

           “You will make them, though?”

           “I’ll consider it.”

            Thomas leaned back, kissed the tip of his nose. “Thank you. I’m sure you’ll quite enjoy feeling useful again.”

            “Doing the laundry is useful.”

            “It’s also boring and not a challenge at all, and I won’t have your mind slipping into an anticonversational state because you can’t be bothered to exercise it.”

            “Would you rather have me take up your job? Annoying the editors of half a dozen colonial newspapers with the accounts of a Londoner’s life in Cahokia?”

            “I perform a valuable public service in contributing to knowledge and posterity, not to mention the entertainment provided to countless readers, many of whom insist I move east in order that my wife and I may entertain them more frequently.”

            “How much am I included in these accounts?” James asked, knowing full well what Thomas meant and wondering how he’d managed to reconcile James with a remotely convincing image of peaceful domesticity. Well. Maybe it wasn’t so hard, come to think of it.

            “You’re in them often enough. Neither of us has names, of course, which makes it exceptionally easier to write them. All I need to do is go back in with a pen to add a few ‘s’s to pronouns, and voila. Perfectly charming.”

            “Charming? Me? Are you sure these are honest accounts?”

            “Of course they are, my darling. If you could spend a single day in our dear wife’s shoes you’d know without a doubt. She’d call you charming on your worst day.”

            “Miranda’s temperament was hardly softer than mine.”

            “Exactly. That’s what makes you so compelling when I bend our circumstances into fictitious propriety. You are a force of nature when you want to be, but I’ve no doubt if you were a woman you’d be an absolute terror.”

            “Shame I’m so comfortable in breeches.”

            Thomas laughed, leaned into him. “We don’t have to stay here, forever, you know. Even with proper work I expect you’ll get bored of this place sooner or later.”

            James had a feeling Thomas wasn’t entirely talking about him. “If that happens, we can go. I wouldn’t mind living near the sea again.”

            “I can picture it now. Port Master McGraw directing merchants with practiced ease and never setting foot on a ship again himself.”

            “I believe that job would require I set foot on some of the ships. Not to mention the work sounds far too demanding even for a retired pirate. Or that using the name ‘McGraw’ might get us hunted down for something.”

            “Because nothing says ‘I’m a hunted man’ like a good old Irish surname.”

            James set up proper shop in the yard once the snow melted. Not much of a carpenter, but he hadn’t been much of a pirate, at first, either.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for lots of talk about pain, death, etc. and Thomas briefly touching on his asylum experience. Not a dark chapter end though because I wouldn't do you like that, promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's late, I was finishing season one again and freaking forgot it was friday
> 
> only one more and then it's part two

            Spring came, and James continued running a half-fangled carpentry business out of their yard, and Thomas’s work was in such demand that one editor offered to pay his way to Boston if it meant Thomas would write for him exclusively.

            “We could never live in Boston. Too big. How am I to keep writing such wonderful stories?”

            James snorted and went back to sanding down a chair. He wasn’t exactly turning a profit since he’d tripped and broken the one it was replacing, but ‘safe’ and ‘free’ felt much more real when he was making his livelihood instead of stealing it. “Someone would recognize me in Boston. And even if not, neither of us could stand it. Too English.”

            They spoke like that often, hypothetical discussions of what they’d do when they left, but Cahokia was nice enough and neither of them was particularly eager to up and leave the second it stopped freezing every night.

            Only Thomas’s career was plateauing. And James had already read all their books a hundred times. Not to mention no one in town needed furniture anymore.

            James looked up from where he was reading in bed, glanced at Thomas, asked, “Alright?”

            “Alright,” Thomas agreed. “Not especially well, though, wouldn’t you say?”

            James sighed. They’d discussed this at length. Though peace and recovery had come from their quiet haven, the small French river town was far from the life they’d envisioned. Nine months had passed since Flint disappeared from Nassau. If they chose a lesser-travelled city- “Do you think it’s time?”

            “I think it’s time.”

            “Where do we go? Neither of us has been north.”

            “We’ll ask around.”

            James cocked his head.

            “Spend a few nights in the pub, talk to all the traders passing through. I have some idea already.”

            James grinned. “And I thought you were too busy complaining about me to be gathering information.”

            “I’m a skilled man. I can do two things at once. Though England’s views on our situation are less than sympathetic, some of the colonies prioritize religious freedom. In that regard we’d be in little more danger than we are here.”

            James raised his eyebrows.

            “I mean it. Two Englishmen holing up outside a French fur hub? I’d hardly call that inconspicuous.”

            “Still, the risk of recognition-”

            “James?”

            “Thomas.”

            “Do you want to get out of here?”

            “Yes.”

            “Good.” Thomas rose, sat next to him, leaned to kiss him on the forehead. “You handled plenty of our escape and plenty of our survival since then. Let me handle this.”

            James smiled, shook his head. “I wasn’t the one who said I’d carry you out of there-”

            “A menace. You are an absolute menace and I refuse to reinforce your recollections with my own. The only person I’ve ever met who had a longer memory for my grander declarations-”

            “Died screaming.” James came back to himself. “I’m sorry.” They’d been talking about Boston, again. Last time he’d considered imagining it-

            “You don’t have to be. Not for this. Never for this.” He took James’s face in his hands.

            Thomas’s expression made him weak. He nodded.

            “I’ll start going around tomorrow looking for information.” Thomas kissed him again and went back to writing.

            “Sounds lovely.”

 

            About a week later, when it was sunny enough for snow to seem a distant memory and the number of traders they saw in a day surpassed those they met all winter, “I’ve decided. Or- I think I’ve decided. If you’re amenable.”

            James snorted. Like he cared where they went as long as it was remotely safe. “I trust you.”

            “We’re headed to Providence.”

            James shivered. Not the same, not the same, he’s-

            Thomas judged it as the small slip it was and kept talking, “Rhode Island. One of the more religiously tolerant colonies.”

            James raised his eyebrows. “Religiously tolerant?”

            “Stands to reason that if our relationship is illegal on biblical grounds, we operate within a gray area. Not to mention authorities are lax there anyway. Everyone’s done something to deserve being transported, at least that’s how England sees it. This place is an experiment. The whole continent is. On the off chance we’re stupid enough to get ourselves noticed, I figure we stand a good chance of…”

            “Arguing our way out of the noose?” Gotten so used to it and now, after pretending to be safe, after being as close as they might ever get, to think they wouldn’t be _again_ -

            Thomas grimaced. “Hoping to find a better way to put it, but yes. Serious though colonists may consider the issue, at least there we’ll have a chance to buy ourselves some time and- I don’t know. It’s not as good a contingency plan as letting an uncaring settlement like this one kick us out. But we need it, you and I. Some form of society like those we once knew, to keep us sane.”

            James thought back on Nassau. He had to admit it had served the purpose Thomas was describing, providing company the likes of which they hadn’t found much of in a tiny and mostly-transient French river village. A colonial town would have people they could speak to about more than the crops and the weather and the progress being made on the new brothel going up down the street. James sighed. “We could always try and join the natives, you know.”

            Thomas shook his head. “I know how easy it would be to move to nowhere, find someplace truly safe and away from everything and never leave. But even though the dream is dead-”

            James finished sentence for him, “We still need to hear if it’s not.” And help, if it’s not. Though how remained to be seen.

            Thomas looked resigned. “Exactly.”

            It was the perfect retirement from piracy, the life Thomas was describing. A settled one near enough to familiar company to- to what? Keep them sane? Though James sometimes wished nothing more than to build a shelter in the woods and never set foot on civilized soil again, he doubted they could survive that isolation. And even if they could find a community willing to take them in, despite their being very, very (if formerly) English, Thomas was right. They wouldn’t know what was going on. And after everything they’d done- “I wish I could say the news was not worth it. I wish I could say the chance was not worth it.”

            “I know.”

            “I wish I could say the isolation would be a comfort. A peace. Another way of achieving what we so desperately wanted.”

            “I know.”

            “But it can’t.” James had never imagined a day when he’d have to give up. Still hadn’t, not completely. The moment the opportunity arose, so long as it didn’t pose too great a threat to his and Thomas’s safety- James would return to Nassau in a second if he thought there was still a chance he could liberate them from England that way.

            Even though it was stupid. Foolish. Idealistic. Not something he thought he and Thomas would be able to decide, not properly, not to the point of returning fully to the fray or abandoning it completely. But they had to be close. They had to know. No matter how nonexistent their direct involvement.

            Thomas’s sad smile agreed.

            “So we’re going to Rhode Island,” James said.

            Later, in bed, long after Thomas was asleep, he remembered that feeling of standing on the beach. Watching the English ships approach and knowing he’d rather be burned alive than accept the pardon they’d offered.

            Don’t make trouble and you stand a chance. Don’t make trouble and you get to stay with us. Reap our benefits and remain silent. James had not been silent in more than ten years, and if not for the incessant need to keep both of them alive and well he never would have dreamed of doing so again.

            Accepting defeat by John Silver was easy. He’d known all along what Silver might be doing, that despite the bond they’d formed Silver might decide it was time for him to take over. He’d suggested it more than once, in his words, his manner, the way he moved and looked and spoke. I don’t like what you’re doing but I trust your leadership enough to allow it.

            Allow it. Silver was allowing it, because, in the end, James very much doubted he’d be able to take Silver’s life. If it came down to that, Silver’s pistol aimed at his chest and nothing to do but surrender or fight? And when it had come to that, when defeat was certain even if James survived? What was the point of killing Silver when his last hope for peace had been eviscerated, again, torn so irreparably apart that not even the formidable James Flint could restore it?

            This latest defeat, the defeat of Thomas Hamilton and James McGraw and Miranda Hamilton and the hundreds, thousands of others who’d died for the cause, this was too much to bear. Too much to give. England was asking too much. They always had. James could not accept it. Not really.

            But he’d have to live with it. James would have to live with it for the rest of his life. Knowing the most he could wring from this living hell was Thomas alive, and no more. Anything less and he wouldn’t have been able to stand it. Anything less but this one person safe and well, risen from the grave as Miranda never would be? James would never stop fighting. He would’ve died Flint, screaming orders above the sound of cannon fire as he and the last few rebels fell in battle to the English navy.

            James knew better than to be handed a miracle only to throw it away. He would not take for granted this gift, this life, his and Thomas’s life. He could not go back and change any of it, make any single decision differently in the hopes that peace may have been found another way; all he could do was go on living, and protecting the one thing that was left to live for.

            Well. Save a freedom he’d resigned himself never to see.

            What did that mean? That they really should go, leave behind everything they’d ever known and head West?

            He couldn’t see their plans get within Thomas’s reach- all that comfort, all that familiarity, all those books and conversations and thoughts- only to be wrenched away again.

            “What’s life without a little danger?”

            “That’s’a’spirit,” Thomas mumbled, not really waking, and burrowed deeper into his pillow.

            As James looked at him, he reminded himself that he would do anything for Thomas, and Thomas would do anything for him. It’d been enough before and it’d have to be enough moving forward.

            Flint had killed hundreds for this man.

            That was nothing compared to what James McGraw was willing to do.

 

            When it was finally time to leave, they threw in their lot with two traders that had decided to travel east together to have some company. They more than appreciated the addition of another two people to help with the journey, and one even knew Thomas, had delivered articles for him.

            A few hours outside Cahokia, on a particularly uninhabited stretch of land, James looked out at the vast wilderness surrounding them and laughed. Hundreds of acres of untouched soil around him, unseen by a single English subject (or a proper one, at any rate). The sight made James much more comfortable about any potential future rebellion than he’d been a second ago. “The sun never sets on the British Empire my ass.”

            “Don’t let a soldier hear you say it,” advised one trader. The other only smirked and shook his head; he, like Beaumont, was half-English.

            Thomas leaned close and whispered, “God I love you,” before going to speak with a trader, and James wondered how, for a second time in mere moments, his faith in the cause could be redoubled again.

            “I think I like it here,” he said to no one in particular, and kept walking.

 

            “Thomas.”

            “Hm?”

            “You’re suffocating me.”

            With a heavy sigh and some unintelligible grumbling, he rolled off James.

            “Thank you.”

            “You weren’t complaining last night.”

            “No. I wasn’t. A bit preoccupied.” They were holed up in a small coastal inn, having finally reached better-trodden roads and parted ways with the traders.

            Thomas hummed and opened his eyes. He’d stayed on his stomach, and his neck was craned at a ridiculous angle so he could make eye contact. “What d’you think they’re going to say when we come downstairs?”

            “They won’t say anything to me. I was silent as a church mouse.”

            “Silent as a-” Thomas huffed. “The second we’re out of civilization again you’ll be rendering me deaf-”

            “Shout in the wilderness and we’re dead. Do you know anything about sleeping outside?”

            “We slept outside for a month, and I distinctly recall you scaring the birds away with a shout so loud I myself jumped-”

            “That was in the daytime. When it’s light enough to properly defend yourself you can draw as much attention as you like.”

            “You mean _you_ can draw as much attention as you like.”

            James smiled in admission of defeat.

            Thomas rolled his eyes. “Expect we’d’ve been kicked out already if you hadn’t had years at sea preparing you for quiet.”

            “Years as a captain, in my own cabin, with nothing but a blanket to warm my bed. You were living in quite similar conditions to a ship, as I recall, though the barracks offered a lot less privacy than a separate room, even when I was sharing it. And yet-”

            “I didn’t have anyone to warm my bed, either.”

            “No.” James leaned in, suddenly serious, took Thomas’s face in his hands. “You didn’t.”

            “Blame yourself for that again and I’ll get us kicked out on purpose to even the score.”

            James huffed. “It’ll never be even.”

            “I’d say you’re right, if only because your sacrifice far surpasses mine.”

            “Don’t.” Pain in the word. Couldn’t help it.

            Thomas sat up, dislodging his hands. “No, we haven’t spoken about it. I left it alone because I didn’t want to upset you, didn’t feel it was time, but if even now you remain so delusional as to think my suffering worse than yours, I think it’s time I disillusion you.”

            James had known it was coming. For a while had known Thomas would need him to hear it. They’d known each other for nearly a year again and Thomas still hadn’t told him, out of concern or mercy or hesitation, didn’t matter which. It was time now. Because for everything James had told him, for how understanding Thomas had been- he wouldn’t expect James to return that understanding on faith alone. Wouldn’t let him.

            And so. “I spent the first five years being driven mad by a place that was supposed to cure me of that affliction.”

            James waited.

            “My father knew I wasn’t anywhere near the insanity the other rich families claimed severe enough to warrant imprisonment. But I was a foolish boy to him, a wayward son who couldn’t be controlled, and my age and status meant nothing in their own rite, once he called my fitness into question.”

            “That was my fault. I should have-”

            “Shut up.” Thomas’s voice was low and dangerous, the words just shy of cutting but harsh enough to keep James from interrupting further. He didn’t need a lover’s guilt now; Thomas was speaking, and he’d be damned if James didn’t listen. “You knew my father. Knew what he was capable of, and I daresay you would have slit his throat that day if he’d been within your reach. But he acted too swiftly, and I- I wanted the two of you to have a chance.

            “I knew you wouldn’t go if it was only your choice, but you had Miranda to convince you. She could see through our love in ways we never could- see the consequences, how ruinous it could be to all three of us and everything we were trying to do. She loved us enough to do what needed to be done in that moment, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

           James thought back to Silver on the ship, that last time, and wondered if that was love. It must have been, though even now he couldn’t be sure. He’d let Silver do that for him, once, keep him from making too wrong a decision, and then it was his turn to do it for Silver.

            Ten years ago it had been Miranda’s turn. “She kept the two of you alive, which was the only way we’d have a hope of continuing the plan, and for as hard as it was in that hell I held onto my will to live because I was doing it for you, for this, for everything we were trying to accomplish. And I won’t hear a word of unequal sacrifice. We both lost our humanity for that cause and I’m damned certain Miranda came as close as you’d let her before she gave her life for it.”

            James was shaking; Thomas was eerily still, frozen by his rage.

            He spoke like he’d been waiting to say it for years, and the unyielding determination in Thomas’s voice was the only thing that kept James from crying. “It was hell. We were in hell, all three of us. Though I suppose on mine and Miranda’s part purgatory may be a more apt description. If I told you how they tortured me would the thoughts haunt you any less? If you knew the precise means by which they attempted to unmake me, and the extent to which they succeeded, would you feel any better about it? They attempted to heal my mind through the complete destruction of my body. It killed many a weaker patient, loathe though I am to describe myself as strong by comparison. Purging and ice baths were especial favorites, though bloodletting was never out of the question. If I hadn’t been determined to stay alive- which was of the utmost importance lest I let you or Miranda be tormented by news of my death, potentially undoing all I’d been incarcerated for- I doubt I would have lived to see the second year. I know little of the bloodshed among pirates, or the trials of the sea, but within days I was intimately familiar with the torments of the English madhouse. If their aim was not to kill us outright, which it often may as well have been, it was to make us forget we were men- to strip our humanity from us to an extent sufficient for mute compliance to take its place.

            “You’ve told me you felt less than a man, monstrous, because of what you’ve done. I can scarcely imagine it, though I’m no stranger to inhumanity. Shells are easy to control, you see. Had I the opportunity to reclaim myself through force, I, too, may have known your monstrosity. But for all the strength I found in the two of you, the overwhelming possibility of my death, should I respond unfavorably to treatment, eventually became its own deterrent. What would the point be, I reasoned, if, after fighting for so many months, I simply decided not to live? What would my sacrifice have been for, not only for you, but for the others there, and for myself? The only conceivable mode of victory in that place was survival, and once I affixed myself to that I needed only outlast my father.

            “The hospital would not keep those whose families couldn’t pay. Should my father die unexpectedly, I may have the chance to return to society and tarnish his reputation. Such a thing could not be allowed, so he faked my death, made me disappear. No chance of my threatening his legacy when the day finally came. Then you made him answer for my imaginary death. The irony is exquisite. You killed him for sending me to die, and in doing so proved his plan infallible. Sometimes when sleep evaded me I’d wonder if I would have stood a chance otherwise, how I could have made it back to you and Miranda if I’d been released.” Thomas took a moment, breathed, stared off at the unvisited futures they might have lived to see.

            James wanted to reach out, but feared Thomas would flinch away.

            “The plantation was nothing,” Thomas continued, meeting his eyes again. “That was purgatory. I suppose we experienced an even share of both between us- hell for you, purgatory for Miranda, and I got a little of both. Though that would mean you had the worst of it. Even now I know you won’t let me stand that argument.” He cracked a smile.

            James laughed, then sobbed, and before he could wonder if Thomas would shrink from him Thomas’s arms were around him, cradling James’s head to his chest. For an indiscernible number of minutes, Thomas held him as he cried.

            Finally James could breathe again. He pulled back to look at Thomas’s face. “Is it my turn?”

            The compassion in his eyes broke James’s heart. “It doesn’t have to be. You’ve told me plenty already.”

            James cleared his throat, steadied his voice. “I feel the need to defend my argument, even though you seem determined not to abide it.”

            “Alright.” Thomas leaned back a little, offering whatever space James wanted to take.

            It didn’t feel right, saying this in Thomas’s arms. It was his burden, or had been until now, and he’d tell it the way Thomas had told his- partly, if not entirely, alone. “I’d say we all had our fair share of both. Purgatory and hell. All three of us.” James realized that he had to speak for Miranda, owed Thomas this despite having had precious few conversations about it with her. Miranda’d deserved to tell Thomas how she felt herself. “I can only share what she told me. Doubtless it was much worse than she ever let on.”

            “I’m sure it was,” Thomas murmured. Then, “You can go on.”

            “Miranda was mostly confined to the house inland. She had precious few visitors, I’m sure, and as the town was overrun by pirates I doubt she spent much time there.” It only dawned on him then how little he knew about what Miranda did with her days. They spoke so infrequently about it; every time he stepped through the door he was either keeling over with exhaustion or telling her how far they were in the latest leg of the plan. “It was different, when it started. We were more- we tried to be- it was never like that for us. We never acted married. We never were. Both of us tried to make something of it, our life, apart from what we were trying to do, but the more we tried the more it felt wrong. We gave each other what we needed. Got closer. Were even alright, sometimes. When we thought you died it-” there weren’t words.

            James inhaled, continued. “We needed new names lest the English found us. Neither of us could stand the thought of me pretending- not while you were still alive, and even then- She called herself Barlow, and I Flint. We could play music there, and read. Have a minute of peace before getting shot or stabbed again. Never had anyone over, not while I was around, at least. Couldn’t risk it. Not until we were desperate, on the run, hiding someone, hardly social visits. The Guthries ran trade on the island, legitimized it. Miranda had to shelter Eleanor’s father- Richard- once, for me. I always hated to bring piracy anywhere near her, but she- I think she welcomed it, in a way. Finally having an active role. She was always doing something even when I wasn’t around, working towards our best interest even if I couldn’t see it. She lied to me, nearly betrayed me, because she could see ways that I-” James cut off. “She wanted us to survive as much as you did. Even if that meant losing to England.”

            Thomas’s voice was quiet, careful, a question that demanded no answer even if he knew James would likely give one. “What did you want?”  
            “I wanted to see our plan through, to make England pay in blood for your sacrifice. When we heard you’d died it became the only way. Freeing Nassau from England was the only way forward. That was my sole purpose. It was everything. The only thing that could have made your death-” Worthwhile? Never. Bearable? Not that either. “I don’t know what it was really like, for Miranda. Watching me become another person, sinking deeper by the day into a dark mire while both of us knew you suffered, while she could do almost nothing in her isolation. When I first got my ship, she wanted to come with me.

            “It was foolish, and even she knew it. Any hope of returning to London for you would be impossible if anyone learned- and how could they not- that she had joined me in that regard. Didn’t matter whose name she gave to the pirates. Someone would know. Not to mention how much more dangerous it would be for both of us, her knowing so little at the outset. I’d have had to teach her to fight, keep her alive while she learned, and even then- I’m sure she could have learned well enough. But that would mean risking her life. Both our lives. Me on a ship you could forgive. Her… logic won out. We convinced ourselves how much better off we’d be with her in Nassau, keeping an eye on everything while I was gone. Both of us learned too late that we were resigning her to a different kind of insanity- the kind born of inaction.

            “As for me, you already know most of it. The sailing was the same. Days of waiting with action come and gone in an instant. Not action. Carnage. I killed… Jesus, Thomas, I killed. So many. A hundred traders, a thousand, dead at my command, with just as many of my own men falling on the same orders.

            “You always knew. Miranda understood, saw through it, but you still knew it was there. Knew how easily I could be consumed by darkness. It sounded ridiculous in London, but even then you knew what I was capable of. The kind of monster I could become. And it all happened. Without Miranda, I would have- I might’ve sailed to England and attacked the Royal Navy myself.”

            “Is that what you did? When you thought us both dead?”

            “No.” James realized his mistake. “No. I… I kept fighting for an independent Nassau. Although I didn’t know if- losing Miranda nearly drove me mad. I doubt I could have stayed sane long, if not for…” he shook his head. If not for Silver. Thomas was half right; James had gone on without them both, had been given just enough by the only other person he’d met who remotely understood him. Would’ve been impossible to beat James otherwise. “Nothing can be gained, thinking that way now.”

            “Can’t it?” Thomas’s voice was soft, so quiet it was carried by the force of the emotion alone.

            James knew what Thomas meant. They’d both come this far alone, or nearly so. Surely after all that- “Are you trying to convince me I’m worthy of you?”

            Thomas leaned forward, took James’s face in his hands. “Of course not. Worth has nothing to do with it, don’t you see? I only meant- confess what you will, my love, but in this as in all other things we are equal, and you deserve no less happiness for it.”

            He was right. Thomas was right, and James shouldn’t need permission to see it. He’d survived. They’d both survived. Had to inflict and endure multitudes of pain to do it, but they had. Despite other people, worthier people, Miranda, not having made it there. They somehow had. And if they could survive all that, apart? “It doesn’t matter,” James said, embracing him. “All of this. So much pain, so much loss, and it doesn’t matter.” So many people dead for a victory they wouldn’t see in their lifetimes, maybe in the lifetimes of anyone they’d known. All that death for nothing.

            Thomas’s voice was sure, and strong. “It matters. You made it matter, James. You made a mark. You changed this world. People will remember you, and what you did, and they’ll be better off for it.”

            “I hope so,” James said, and he was crying, again, but Thomas was there, he was holding him. “I hope some good came of it.”

            “I have you.” Thomas moved back to look at him.

            “Yes,” James said, and they didn’t talk for hours after that, and when they finally recovered from the blows they’d let each other feel by saying so much, the first words out of either of their mouths were light, joking, fondness and love and insistence that pain was not enough to break them, had never been.

 

            They decided to stay for two more days, because they could afford it, and Thomas insisted. James found out why on the last night, when Thomas said, “Come here,” and held his hands out in front of him.

            James crossed the room, took his hands.

            Thomas held up his own right hand, entwined with James’s left; on it was a ring that hadn’t been there a moment before. “For you. Take it.”

            James frowned, glancing between Thomas and the ring. “Thomas, I-”

            “You never had one,” he said, and pulled both his hands back, slipping the ring from his finger before James could reply. “Here.”

            It was the lightest weight in his palm, a simple gold band with nothing to distinguish it from the one on Thomas’s own left hand. The ring that might still be Miranda’s, if Thomas had been able to keep it. When James held his own ring up to the light, he saw an inscription carved inside: NE MEUR BON, and the outline of a heart. _A good heart never dies._

            James couldn’t see Thomas’s face for crying.

            “Are you alr-”

            “Yes, I’m fine, I just-” James caught his breath and moved back a little, wedged his arms between their chests and slid the ring on his finger. “Where did you-?”

            “Cahokia. I’ve had it, but I didn’t know when to give it to you or if I should at all, because it felt perfect at the time but you’re crying, which-”

            “It is perfect. It is.” And he clung to Thomas again.

            “Really?”

            “Yes, Thomas. Really. Thank you.”

            When they were both calm they slowly stripped out of their clothes. There was a newness to it, a vulnerability James was more than willing to share, but one that surprised him. Between all they’d said and all they’d done and the third ring, the one that should have been on his finger years and years ago… And it was funny, James feeling safe enough to let go, not to care, because they’d be gone in the morning so what did it matter-

            “Does it always feel that good to have sex with someone you married for love?”

            Thomas grinned, shrugged. “Not sure. I mean, probably, just that I wasn’t running the show.”

            “I hardly think that makes much of a dif-” and then James looked up at the ceiling, because he knew Thomas couldn’t be reasoned with. “Will you answer me? I can’t trust him.”

            “She’d say if it didn’t feel that good all the time you weren’t doing it right.”

            “Fuck. That’s exactly what she would have said,” James said, laughing, and that time when he lost himself in Thomas it wasn’t to forget Miranda, but to thank her, for everything she’d done for them and was still doing for them and would likely be doing forever given they were all destined for hell anyway.

            Least they’d determined to go together. In all the ways that mattered.

            When James brought this up, later, Thomas insisted, “She can’t have gone to hell. She’s a martyr. Any God worth his salt knows England’s evil. Need I remind you of the Reformation?” Thomas was heating water for the bath they were about to have.

            It’d cost a fortune to have someone bring the water for them but James figured it was far more worth the coin than whatever pointless piece of furniture they’d have bought with it in Providence. Especially given he’d need to make more practice pieces before selling anything of his in a remotely upstanding colony, and- Christ. They were married, weren’t they? James laughed.  “England is God. Only explanation for how all the Catholics are wrong.”

            “All the Catholics are wrong because they wouldn’t grant dear Henry a divorce.” Thomas cracked the door, shoved the last empty bucket outside, and locked it again. “Expect if we had a bit less scandalized society you and I’d have been legally married by now.”

            James went to join him in the tub. “Right.”

            “How long do you think people can claim, what, three lines of the bible- can’t be more than three.”

            “Bit out of practice. You’d be better off asking a priest.”

            “Shame we couldn’t have one marry us. Could have asked him then.”

            James reached for Thomas’s left hand with his own and tangled their fingers under the water.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's short and it's rough but I needed to finish it and there's a sequel coming so... take it as a whole thing, but know the story doesn't have to end here any more than it had to end on that plantation

            “What do you mean, we just need the chimney?”

            “I mean, if we’re going to build a house here, and use the stone, I like the idea of the whole wall. But I also did a considerable amount of work on mine and Miranda’s place. I can do the other parts.” James was looking at a plan he’d borrowed from the first few men willing to let him examine theirs. There were four or five houses going up in various parts of the city; he’d figured eventually someone would indulge his curiosity.

            “The parts other than the chimney are the whole house.”

            “So? Didn’t you say something about small windows? We’ll make them bigger. Or maybe not. It gets as cold here as it does in London, doesn’t it?”

            “I…” Thomas looked at a loss for words.

            “How do you feel about stairs?”

            “Stairs?”

            “Yes, with your knee I wasn’t sure if-”

            “Stairs are fine,” Thomas said faintly. “Just fine.”

            “Good. Won’t have to deviate much from the standard plan, then.” James flipped it over to the back. “Are you sure about the stairs? I don’t want to make this difficult if-”

            “Darling?” Thomas said it low, through gritted teeth, not nearly loud enough to be overheard but clearly agitated about something.

            “Yes?” James looked up, not hiding his amusement.

            “You’ve been a carpenter for two months and you’re going to build us an entire house?”

            “That’s what you do here. Either that or rent, and I hardly think you want us close enough for the neighbors to hear you using terms of endearment with no one but me to be receiving them. Not to mention we can’t afford to have someone else do it for us.” James passed the plan back to one of the builders with a quick thanks and turned back towards their temporary lodgings.

            Thomas sighed. “While I understand our need for more than the standard amount of privacy, I also don’t know that this is the best plan. In Cahokia I’d understand doing it, if there was a need, but there’s so much already built here, so much to rent-”

            “We’re not renting. It’s a waste. Unless you want to move sometime in the near future?”

            “I’d be perfectly happy if we never moved again.”

            “All the more reason to build a house.” Little though James had learned of the trade before joining the navy, he’d considered carpentry once, and it was the only thing he could think to do beside hiding in plain sight, which he very much did not want to do.

            Within a few days they owned some land and were starting to purchase supplies; they couldn’t get everything at once, but their landlady was kind enough to lend them a corner of the shed to store it all in the meantime.

            Thomas was at his best in their new environment, the same unbounded creative power he’d had on their arrival at Cahokia renewed by life in a new city, not to mention a much more familiar one. He was careful to keep their new location vague, to avoid any chance of identifying detail and consequent discovery. James assured him that anyone who could help advance Thomas’s career damn well deserved to know where he lived. He was also certain few literary men counted pirates among their acquaintances, thus rendering their chances of discovery negligible.

            After sending a few months’ worth of missives up and down the coast, and attempting to furnish or repair every building in the city, they finally had enough to get their house built. James enlisted the help of some of the builders he knew from their common trade, and by the time summer began to wane he and Thomas were sharing a mattress on the floor of their otherwise empty new home.

            They talked more in that empty room in front of their fire than they had in the past year.

            James talked about moments he remembered, good and bad, terrible things he did and wonderful people he knew- Eleanor, Gates, Madi and Silver and all the rest of them.

            Thomas talked about the years he’d lost in the asylum and the ones he’d made the most of afterwards. “The routine helped me to recover. It seems ridiculous to be grateful for something as distasteful as forced labor, but without it, I would have been truly lost.”

            James remembered that feeling. “I felt unmoored, when Miranda died. I felt the slightest wind could cast me away, wholly beyond reason. That the smallest thing could upset my fragile hold on reality and condemn our dream to certain death.” The ache was old and familiar now, always there but not unwelcome; the only way to keep her was to remember her, to keep remembering her until the good memories stood out as strongly in his mind as the bad ones.

            “It won’t die with you.” They talked of their dreams often, now, their goals, despite neither of them knowing precisely how to further them without getting killed in the process.

            The waiting was an ache of its own, one James knew might never be fixed, because they might never have a chance to act on any of it. It was easier knowing that when they were in their house, in their bed, when the only people who knew their stories within a thousand miles were the two of them. “I know that now.” James turned to him. He knew better than to think they’d see England destroyed, but he could still hope when he looked at Thomas. “You always knew, didn’t you?”

            “I always believed. Seeing others survive Bedlam only made that belief stronger.”

            James let the fire be the only sound for a second. “How do you think they’re doing? The next us, I mean?”

            “Oh, I don’t know,” Thomas said, and draped himself across James’s chest. “We can guess they’re doing well enough, if we haven’t heard a word of their defeat.”

            James laughed, put his arms around Thomas. “That’s one way to look at it.”

            “What? It is. I’m sure the same could be said about the rest.”

            “You mean Nassau?”

            “Nassau, London, any of it. So long as we aren’t reading headlines about the unequivocal defeat of the foolish rebels.”  
            “How do we know there are any?”

            “How do we know anything?”

            James sighed and thought of Madi, her mother, their people, with whom he’d found common cause because some part of their belief was the same. “We’ll just have to have faith.”

            “That’s the spirit.” Thomas leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Now, are we going to read something, or does the shop beckon?” The sun had risen a while ago; they’d been talking instead of sleeping.

            James wasn’t even tired. Still too nice lying there for him to want to move. “I wouldn’t call it a shop. More of a shed.” Thrown it up in the yard so he’d never need people traipsing into their house for business.

            “It’s yours, though.”

            “Yes, it’s mine, and without it you wouldn’t have a way to explain how you manage to afford my ridiculously high rent.” They’d spun a story to satisfy their neighbors; Thomas and James ran the business together. In truth they did most things together. Jams had been Thomas’s editor for months and without Thomas’s discerning eye James wouldn’t have gotten a single piece into the furniture shop.

            Thomas laughed. “Ah, right, my work on your accounts. I take it you own this place?”

            “You wouldn’t let me put it in your name lest someone come looking for us.”

            “McGraw really is quite a common name. I-”

            “You know perfectly well I was talking about Thomas Barlow.”

            “That was before. And I’ve never published my name. We didn’t leave a trail.” They’d gone by different names in Cahokia and changed them again in Providence.

            They may be James Miranda and Thomas McGraw now, but that didn’t mean one of the few people who cared couldn’t figure it out. “Your first name’s the same.”

            “And who here knows I ever went by Barlow?”

            “Your writing’s answer enough.”

            Thomas pulled back. “Is it really that distinctive?”

            James returned the kiss to his cheek. “Absolutely.”

            “If I went by Thomas Miranda do you think it’d throw them off the trail?”

            “Why, because Miranda’s a Spanish surname? Or because Thomas Hamilton couldn’t possibly be foolish enough to take the same last name as me?”

            “Neither. Both. Have you ever considered how easy it would be to hide if-”

            “What, we pretended to be brothers? Cousins?”

            “It sounds much more ridiculous when-”

            “I don’t want to pretend.”

            “I know.”

            “I’d rather see the whole island go under.”

            “England? You don’t mean it.”

           “Sometimes I do.” James held him close. “If I didn’t know there were more of us there. More people who wish only to live as they choose, harming only the crown’s sensibilities.”

            “You would have the monarchy deposed.”

            “Depose is too gentle a word. I would have the monarchy annihilated.”

            Thomas let out a breath in his ear, half-laugh, half-sigh. “Maybe I should start a rebel paper. Not really rebel, just-”

            “Don’t you dare.” James took Thomas’s face in his hands. “Do that and I’ll take you far from here. Anywhere else. Away.”

            “Who doesn’t have a king?”

            “We’ll go west. I mean it.”

            “I’d never put you in danger like that.”

            “What if I said yes? What if I helped?”

            Thomas frowned. “James, I don’t-”

            “Shh. I don’t mean any of it. I’m just…”

            “Oh.” Thomas held him. “That’s alright, then.”

            “Thank you.”

            “For what?”

            “Everything.”

            “I’d do it all again.”

            James looked at him, brow furrowed.

            Thomas smiled, sad. “Never happen. But I would. If I knew nothing could be different and I had to do this again for you, I’d-”

            James cut him off with a kiss.

            For a while they laid with their foreheads pressed together.

            Finally James said, “The price was too high.”

            “We’ll do it in another life.”

            “Do you think… do you think we could do it? Be here and not have the past half-drowning us all the time?”

            “I think we can try. I think we’re trying right now.”

            James inhaled. “I’d like to keep trying.”

            “Mmm.”

            “But I’m not changing my name again.”

            “You don’t have to. Unless you want to put us both at risk and take mine.”

            “I won’t.”

            “James Miranda it is, then.”

            “My father was Spanish.”

            “I believe you.”

            “He was a Spanish carpenter. Moved to England when his craftsmanship was in demand.”

            “I don’t doubt it.”

            “It’s true, you know. Not the whole of it, but enough. And my grandparents, I’ll say I was raised by my maternal grandparents. The English ones. I never knew them, really. My mother was the one who moved away.”

            “So was Miranda. When I told her we could live in London forever I thought she’d combust with excitement.”

            “Did she think for a second you’d be content to lock yourself up in some country estate far from the intrigues of politics?”

            “No. I think she was afraid I might drag her to the continent. A year in Paris, another in Rome, that sort of thing.”

            “Thank god you didn’t.”

            Thomas hummed. Then, “Breakfast?”

            “Fine.” And James rose, picking Thomas up with him.

            Thomas laughed. “I’m going to be able to do this to you soon, you know.”

            “Don’t doubt it for a second.”

            “No. Really. Writing’s hard work, it strengthens the wrists something terrible…”

 

            That night James was still thinking about it- what could have happened, what might have. It nagged him, the edge of something he wanted to see but couldn’t pull properly into view. “I really do thank god you didn’t end up in Rome. Touring the continent would have been awful. Life’s much less exciting when you can’t argue with the same people over and over again.”

            “That’s what I told Miranda.” Thomas breathed a laugh. Then, slowly, “You know, there are other ways to keep the revolution alive.”

            James hadn’t realized when he opened his mouth that this was the thread he was pulling. Just to be sure, “It’s a revolution, now, is it?”

            “Yes.” Thomas pressed a kiss to his neck. “It always has been, even if we haven’t always known it.” But then, “What are children for, if not to take over for us?”

            James huffed a laugh. “Much though I’d enjoy attempting to procreate, I highly doubt it would end in either of us-”

            “Take an apprentice.”

            “What?” James sat up, jolted by the unexpected shift from teasing to serious. He’d thought surely Thomas meant- but that was the thing, wasn’t it, one couldn’t know from the formless beginnings of an idea what it might turn into-

            “Take an apprentice. Or adopt an orphan. Can you imagine?”

            James was still, frozen. “Thomas, I-”

            Thomas took both his hands. “Just imagine. One moment, just imagine it.”

            James tried. “Thomas, we’d never be able to-”

            “According to who?” And Thomas was fully serious now, sitting up and staring with that defiant look, the one that dared anyone in a hundred miles to challenge him knowing full well they’d lose, so fierce was his argument. “Carpenters take apprentices all the time.”

            James felt hope and fear twist somewhere far too close to where Flint had once lived. “Thomas-”

            Thomas placed a hand on either of his shoulders. “I know I sound insane. Quite worthy of Bedlam. But- consider it?”

            The very thought made him ache.

            Thomas’s vehemence wilted. “Ah, I can see I’ve put you off.”

            “No, I-”

            “Made the same mistake a hundred times and still haven’t learned.”

            “You didn’t make a mistake.”

            Thomas turned back, pulled a book from the pile on the floor next to the bed and opened it. “One more chapter?”

            James nodded, sank into the pillows, and tried to listen.

            Listening was not easy. His thoughts were too loud.

            James thought. And thought. And thought and thought until his head screamed with the effort, until the sun came up.

            “My love,” Thomas said with a yawn. He caught sight of James and frowned. “Please tell me you haven’t done it again?”

            James blinked, looked at him. “Done what?”

            “Stayed up all night.” Thomas raised a hand to his cheek, brushed the shadow that must be there. “Two nights in a row. Quite awful.”

            “Thomas, what if we could-”

            Thomas went still, recognizing the look on James’s face.

            “What if we could make a place for people? For us, for people like us, or…” James shook his head.

            Thomas exhaled, eyes wide. “Have you struck upon one possible answer to our quest for purpose and entertained one of my more foolish dreams both at once?”

            “I don’t know.” James levelled him a gaze. “Do you think we could do it?”

            “Depends what you mean. Depends how.” Then he smiled. “I could do anything with you at my side, you know that.”

            For the first time since he’d conceived of the idea, James considered its realization in practical terms. Thomas had always been good at gathering people. He wielded a charm whose lure far surpassed Flint’s powers of intimidation; on his best day Thomas would have his and Miranda’s house full to bursting. With philosophers and artists and political theorists jammed into every available chair it was a wonder any of them could be silent long enough to hear Thomas’s welcome. James had witnessed precious few of these gatherings, maintaining the social appearance of a naval man rather than cultivating that of a literary one. He preferred to spend his time with Thomas and Miranda alone. Still, James had heard. Scores of stories, names, the lofty ideals discussed in sympathetic company and the countless times Miranda had unmanned a guest with a single sentence or a quelling look. They’d had all the vigor one needed for a proper rebellion, the force of ideas and the backing of enough logical arguments. All they’d needed was for someone to light the match, give them some direction for all that energy, preferably one more productive than ‘kill the king.’

            That’s what they’d had, in the beginning. The drive to create something different, something the world had never seen, even if it had to start as a partnership with rebels instead of true alliance with them. And they’d gotten so close.

            People were the Hamilton’s stock-in-trade, their chief enjoyment, the thing that kept them distracted until James and Nassau and all of it came careening into their path. James remembered thinking that all it would take was Thomas and Miranda in the right room, at the right time, with the right people, and-

            Thomas had spent years without influential company. So had Miranda, for most of their time in Nassau. It was only since their move to Providence that they’d had glancing contact with it. But influence wasn’t what they needed, not anymore, not for this. For this they needed something they’d seen in Cahokia, on the plantation before that and maroon settlements before that and haphazard London gatherings before that: they needed sympathy. They needed people who saw the good in whatever they were trying to do and let them do it.

            No chance of gaining sympathy if the wrong people found out they were attempting to build a haven for societal outcasts. That would be too dangerous, too threatening. But it was not in James to stop fighting. It hadn’t been in Miranda, either, not when their goal had been truly attainable.

            So what, then? What could they do that would keep the revolution alive without seeming to pose a threat to traditional order?

            “We could build a school.” They could do it, James knew. Never would have considered it before. But now-

            “That’s the greatest idea anyone’s ever had.” Thomas’s tone was steady, soft, backed with truth but trying to bring him down. “Could you be persuaded to sleep, now you’ve struck on it?”

            James blinked. Saw that Thomas had latched onto his idea, believed in it. Also was concerned James had been awake for two days and probably would relish the chance to think about their plans without having to worry about James still being awake. “Can you draw the curtains?”

            Thomas rose, and did, then went to kiss James on the forehead. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me. You’ll sleep?”

            James could feel the energy draining from him already, now that the lack of sleep had borne something. “Yes.”

 

            They knew it’d take months of planning and probably years of building, but neither of them particularly cared. It was something they could do, something they could both do, something good, something safe.

            James almost didn’t believe it.

            It wasn’t fighting, not in name at least. But it was something. Wasn’t in him to stop fighting for good, any more than it was in Thomas, any more than it’d been in Miranda. Not so long as their goals had been within reach.

            Towards the end it had been different. After countless hours spent alone wondering what it had all been for if after all the work and sacrifice the only thing they had to show for it was defeat. James understood why Miranda had tried to get him to Boston. Could never bend on that point himself, not while there was still a hope for Nassau. But he understood it. Wanting to be safe. Wanting to turn away from the need to be careful, always watchful, always afraid.

            Couldn’t do that with Thomas. Couldn’t forgive England for it.

            There was no future for them in Nassau, and not much of one in the way of revolution.

            But Thomas was right- they could keep it alive. This could be enough.

            “We’ll need money,” Thomas said. They talked about it all the time, planned for it all the time; James knew Thomas had a stack of papers dedicated to it, was filling a shelf, and it had hardly been a week since he’d first suggested it.

            “Think we can find an investor?” James was working. Thomas could come in, while he was working. They could just _be_.

            “Definitely. Take a few decent letters, I expect, but it can be done. If the letters don’t work I can always write a book.”

            “Do you want to write a book?”

            “Yes. I have since… god, I think I always have. Might have to compromise on the subject matter a bit if we want to raise enough, though.”

            “It’ll be wonderful.” James blew some dust off the chest of drawers he was sanding and ran a hand over it, testing the smoothness.

            “You truly think so?”

            “I know it.”

            Thomas stepped up to the chest of drawers, leaned over it. “Honest?”

            “I’ll never lie to you.”

            “Nor I to you,” Thomas said.

            “Good.” James said, and sighed.

            “What is it?”

            James met his eyes. “We can’t start with a school.”

            “Why not? I’m an accomplished writer and you’re an esteemed carpenter. I think between us we can-”

            “I’m not starting anything until I know the two of us can be trusted looking after a child.”

            Thomas sank into the nearest chair. “You suggest something _reasonable_ at a time like this?”

            “It wasn’t reasonable a few days ago. Not to mention how it’ll make us look. Like legitimate New World tradesmen, instead of mad exiles hoping to revitalize anti-English sentiment through the indoctrination of children.”

            “We aren’t going to indoctrinate them.”

            “No. But we’re going to need to mentor them, teach them, and care for them. Forgive me for thinking I ought not to be trusted with a score of them when the closest I’ve gotten to any of that was Billy.”

            Thomas grit his teeth at one of his least favorite references to James’s past. “He was a grown man when you met him, and so were the rest of your crew.”

            “Another good point.”

            Thomas sighed. “That isn’t what I meant.”

            “No, but it’s true. I’m not going to presume to instruct children having spent fewer than ten minutes with one in the past decade.”

            Thomas smiled, shook his head. “For so long I thought you were the dreamer. Imagine that.”

            “Suppose it’ll help knowing the cost of a single other person’s upkeep. Can’t expect to know how much an entire school costs with no point of reference.”

            Thomas rose, strode up to James, and beamed at him. “My wondrous husband, I’ve convinced you.”

            “If you mean to imply apprenticeship was your goal all along, I’m afraid I’m not falling for it. Now the idea of a school’s in both our heads it’ll be impossible getting it out again.”

            “It was worth a try.”

            James smirked. “I know.”

            “Shall we propose our mentorships to the council tomorrow?” Thomas went to the door.

            “Think we ought to start with local laws on apprenticeship, don’t you?”

            “You the reasonable one, honestly,” Thomas muttered, and went back to the house.

            James continued sanding, an old song rising, unbidden, to his lips. It was a pirate one, and it didn’t hurt, and the only person near enough to hear him wouldn’t dream of judging him for it.

            He’d forgotten how good it felt to have a functional plan.

 

            The bay was the closest James had been to the ocean save a handful of nights on their way north.

            Standing on the beach, smelling the mist that promised the sea was not too far, some of the old peace came back to him. Moments on the water he’d felt right and whole and alive. This was where he was meant to be now. Pacing up and down the beach from their property all the way to the colony’s southernmost point. Gazing into that horizon and knowing, a few gusts of wind away, a few currents, and he’d be back on the ocean.

            Knowing to his core that he may never make it that far again and not at all minding.

            Someone cleared their throat behind him; Thomas. “Watching the waves?”

            James nodded, felt the slight shift in the air as Thomas sank to the ground a foot away.

            “I like to watch them. They remind me there’s more.”

            “So much more than we will ever know,” James said, soft.

            For a while they just stared.

            When James spoke again the words fell out of him, unsought. “I always thought that when I died I’d end up in the sea. For decades I’ve never been far from it, and I know that even if I met my end ashore, even then, the sea would be there, waiting.”

            “The womb of the world, the grave and the cradle,” Thomas said softly.

            “It’s the greatest force that ever was. Nothing can withstand it. In time we are all cast back into it, returned from whence we came. England, Spain, the whole damned continent, the whole damned world. None of it can withstand the sea. Suppose it’s a comfort. That even if men never defeat it, one day the ocean will swallow England whole.”

            “You’ve slept much better since we got here.”

            “I rest easier knowing that even though I couldn’t do it, the day will come to see it done.”

            Thomas nudged his ankle with a foot. “England made a grave mistake the day it angered James McGraw.”

            “Perhaps.” He stood staring at the waves. Seeing beyond them. “I often wonder how I had the confidence to stand against such greed. To stand against a force arrogant enough to think itself worthy of this. I think it was you and Miranda. I felt I could accomplish anything, with you. Still do.” He could still see it. A liberated Nassau, a pirate republic, ships lining the beach and free men crowding the port. “It would have been beautiful.”

            “It will be. One day.”

            James turned away from the sea, offered Thomas his hand.

            He took it, let himself be pulled up, asked, “Where are we going?”

            “Home.”

            With Thomas there it could be true.


End file.
